


The Woods Are Up In Flames

by Atrokiss



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Background Relationships, Canon Compliant, Dad Dennis Reynolds, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Internalized Homophobia, Lesbian Dee Reynolds, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Original Character(s), Non-Graphic Violence, Out Mac McDonald, Recreational Drug Use, Sexuality Crisis, Trans Charlie Kelly, Trans Male Character, but for the most part it follows the canon, implied eating disorder but not graphic its really only in the first chapter!, lots of flashbacks!!, mac gets sum new friends eheh, tries to be at least lol
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-02-15 16:19:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 43,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18673195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atrokiss/pseuds/Atrokiss
Summary: This is an homage to Mac and Dennis; a love letter to anyone that's ever loved someone, and a glorification of all the secret things they do to show it when they don't have the means to say it."Mac might love Dennis and Dennis might be gay. Nobody could ever really know for sure, but Charlie saw something in the wash of the moonlight, he could see it like a hushed love whispered between the two of them, one that Mac couldn’t admit to and Dennis would never know. Charlie just rolled over onto his side and closed his eyes, drifting off to sleep."





	1. Somebody Lit The House On Fire

**Author's Note:**

> I will be updating every week or so, and you can always talk to me on [tumblr](https://saintmilksteak.tumblr.com/) and listen to the playlist I made for this story [here!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4Cb3SoLulQJTVqOpJglyK6)
> 
> This has taken me a long time to write and edit and I am so incredibly proud of this story. I hope you all like it as much as I do. I just really wanted to write something to capture all of Mac and Dennis' relationship, their dynamic is so rich in chemistry and undertones and I wanted to flesh it out, which quickly turned into this.

He sat out on a curb in the parking lot with the sky burning like wildfires behind him. Rings of breath billowed out into the air from his parted lips, his body taking comfort in the cold sting of the evening. There were two cars parked symmetrically behind him, side by side evenly situated between their respective white lines. He smoked his breath until his lungs burned cold, taking all of that the ivory wind back into his chest with a cavernous sigh heaving mightily and strong. 

He spoke like sun and wind, with harshness and cool bristling through the crack of static in the trees; I am like God and like thunder and lighting, he told himself. He cradled his face in his hands, shuddering and gasping for light and for life with the swell of the song bursting from the insides of the school building behind him. Lights strung around the outside of it blinked like a thousand tiny eyes watching and waiting for him to come back in. 

He’d felt glamorous and divine earlier that evening, just a few hours ago he’d imagined himself feeling like a real man with his prom date in the backseat of his car. Yet here he was sitting outside alone crying; and what a pity it was to waste such a pretty young thing like himself on a night like this.

Inside another boy stalked through the crowd in between the beat of that song. His footsteps were off kilter, his hands twisted up in angry knots by his sides as he searched for the familiar face he wanted to curse at. His face tilted up towards the ceiling as he entered the gym, stopped suddenly in a moment of clarity pointing through the break of heat and aggravation he’d felt moments before. It smelled like a gymnasium; just how you think it would, despite being dressed up and decorated as something with more class. It smelled like a polish finish laid over old wood planks and of bodies sweating and flying over the court. It was magnificent, it was freeing. His skin was all bathed in the colored lights that came down from the gym heights, feeling an ache like regret bloom across his chest. He wished he’d officially gone to prom, suddenly feeling left out of all the excitement his whole high school career.

The boy outside was patting his pockets down for the papers, his fingers wrapped around them as though they were the only thing he had left of his friend —or his best friend, or his brother, or his lover— who was fucking his prom date in the gym bathrooms. He wiped his nose on his sleeve and looked out at the highway that snaked along at the bottom of the hill he sat on. Pathetic, he thought. Pathetic how he was crying over a kid that sold him weed, over someone he smoked with out under the bleachers a few times. He shuddered and let the heartache roll out through the exhale in his lungs. After a while the weed began to taste sour so he tossed the burning joint down towards the black tar nestled in the hills, hoping he might start a forest fire and burn up everything along with it one day. 

 

-

 

He rocks up and down in his bed; shuddering with a pain and a sadness that was inescapable so he resigned himself to just sit in it. He sniffled, his breaths all sharp and staccato in his anguish, saccading back and forth like a caged bird in his breast. He cradled his head in his hands and sobbed like a tall child all alone in his dorm room. There was a sudden break of light from the doorway that swelled up over the edges of the dark enveloping his heaving form. Somebody walked in and engulfed the space he was desperately trying not to take up. The mattress of the bed sank beneath the weight of the figure as he sat down beside him, pulling the sheets around his shoulders that shivered and shook in with the golden light blazing from the hall. 

“I’m a fully awful person, Mac,” he shivered, an admittance saved for only them and the soft light beside them. Mac neither argued with nor denied him this, he didn’t refute his friend —or best friend, or his brother, or his lover— he just held him a little closer, a little bit tighter. 

He turned on his side to face Mac in the bed, reaching out to grip the ends of his torn and wrinkled shirt. “Why are you here?” he asked. “Why do you keep coming back?” He looked up at him with bleary eyes that are red and puffy around the edges. His lip quivered; he is like a child, seeming so small and emotionally stunted from birth. 

“I don’t know, I just wanted to see you. I worry about you, man.” Mac said, not daring to move from his place on the edge of the bed for fear that he might brush against the hands still white knuckling the end of his shirt.

“Well maybe— maybe you could just stay here for a while. And that way we’d see each other all the time. And I would—” his words got caught in his throat, caught in the midst of something that sounded like the beginnings of a sob— “I wouldn’t have to be so alone all the time.” He laughed like he didn’t mean it, like it was a stupid, silly suggestion.

“Yeah, Den. I can do that. Sure I can.” 

Night after night Mac would stay. He’d sleep on the floor and twist his spine up into knots for Dennis. He’d sigh in his sleep and imagine a God somewhere out there who was merciful and kind, who would cast out all of this torture and sin. He would dream quietly of a world in which he was not falling in love with a man who was never going to be fully capable of loving him back. Sometimes he’d sleep in Dennis’ bed when he was away, quietly and secretly. He would bury his face in the sheets and inhale taking Dennis in ways he could not when he was there in the flesh.

“We could do this all the time,” Mac would say with sudden bravery and gusto. “We could be happy like this you know, just the two of us, nobody would ever have to know. We can be just like how we used to, it doesn’t have to mean anything,” he would rationalize. 

“No,” Dennis would answer each time with the shake of his head. “Maybe if we’d met at another time, or if this were a different life, but that can’t happen, it won’t happen. And for God sakes don’t you ever forget this— because I’m only going to tell you once Mac— but I care about you. More than anyone I’ve ever known and I’m sure of it that we are soul mates, blood brothers if you will,” He would mutter all wracked with fervency, he’d only say it once but he would tell Mac this every time he dared to ask. 

He could be so dramatic, Mac thought. They made such a scene there together with Mac splayed out on the sheets holding a man breaking into two halves. It was like something out of a movie, and Dennis could be so dramatic, always keeping himself vague and unwilling so Mac could never tell what he was really trying to say. He was always left confused by his monologues and speeches. He hated it so he’d roll his eyes and scoff at him always needing things to be so complicated all the time. He had never said he loved him and Mac wasn’t completely sure if he did, or if he even could. But together they made quite the image; cradled in the dark light of the dorm when it was just the two of them, their insides spilling out onto the white sheets, their blood and guts lurid and clear, all empty of life and blood. 

Dennis turned over on his side and so he could really feel the way the empty static raced through him. Mac was loving someone who is perhaps stuffed with cotton, a plastic heart in the cavern of his chest where the muscle is supposed to be.

Mac had been so easy to push and pull away at will. Dennis could cast him out as easily as he could reel him back in. And he didn’t do it consciously but one night Dennis decided to put him at a distance, he told Mac to sit and stay and learned that Mac would listen and obey. 

So Mac didn’t come back after that night. He called Dennis still, leaving voicemails and texts. And Dennis did missed him, he missed him unbearably so, but he couldn’t stand to answer the phone because he couldn’t stand to face himself; couldn’t look at himself mirrored in the black of Mac’s eyes. Dennis would look at himself, bare and naked in his bathroom mirror and sneer. His body was porcelain, it was sculpted by the rumbling husk inside of his stomach. He was delicate and rare, his skin like stain glass where his joints blushed at each junction. “Disgusting,” Dennis would hiss, letting himself succumb to all that horridness inside of himself because he wouldn’t let Mac come to refute it with his light and goodness, almost like he couldn’t bear look at it in direct sunlight. 

“I’m gonna eat myself alive,” Dennis swore in perfect dramatic and time. 

Life there at college was lonely and utterly unfulfilling, it was killing him. He looked thin, so thin and so fragile almost as if he’d break apart in the wind if it blew hard enough in a certain direction. He hadn’t shown up for classes in weeks and never left his dorm. He barely answered the phone anymore. He held it in the palm of his hands staring at the screen casting a blue light over the dark shrouding his bony figure, over his body collapsing and corroding on his bed sheets. 

Three missed calls were displayed on the small screen. He dialed the number and called back.

“What do you want asshole?” She said, tired and groggy. 

“Dee?” His voice sounded weak and broken up, it was enough to strike a little fear within her.

“You sound like shit.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll come get you.”

His sister made him coffee, wrapped a blanket around him. She’d left the dorms months ago, got her own apartment. It was modest and clean. He was sure he’d never have a life quite like this one. 

“Have you eaten?” she asked him, he shook his head. It’s been four days, but he doesn’t say that. She takes care of him, does things for him like she loves him but she doesn’t say it. It goes unspoken when she hands him a piece of toast and lets him stay there on her couch for the rest of the night.


	2. The World Might Be Lying But So Are You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mac gets lonely and Dennis needs a roomate.

Charlie’s room was covered in things. Random objects were scattered across the carpet, tucked away beneath his dresser and his bed frame. He’s even got things nestled in between the sheets of his bed. Mac sat on something and winced, tossing the object across the room into another pile under his desk.

“You gotta clean your fuckin’ room man,” Mac said, making a face at the clutter like it might come alive any moment. 

Charlie ignored him, keeping his focus on the pencil he was sharpening to a point with a pocket knife. Mac sighed and leaned back against the wall that the bed was pressed up against, watching his friend with rapt attention. Without Dennis around there wasn’t much to keep himself occupied with. He sat around, sometimes went to work at the garage, sometimes he went to Charlie’s, and sometimes he just stayed in bed, unable to get up. Dennis confused him, he could never figure out what he wanted. Things used to be so easy, they used to be best friends and now Dennis could barely look him in the eye. He wished he could be around Dennis all the time and he doesn’t know why or what it means really, he just wanted to be around him. Dennis could be so strange sometimes. 

“Can we hang tomorrow?” Mac asked, sounding like he’s just desperate not to be alone.

“Nah sorry man, doctor's appointment.” 

Mac snorted, huffing with disbelief, “Ya right, when’s the last time you went to the doctors?” 

“Last month or so,” he replied, pointing to the little bottle of testosterone on his nightstand. 

“Oh,”Mac said, disappointed it wasn’t an excuse he could argue against him. “That’s cool then.” He doesn’t understand Charlie or his situation, but he doesn't try to, and they are ap peace with that. This is just how he’s always been, it’s what they’ve always been used to.

Charlie fidgeted with his binder beneath his shirt and continued fastening a blade from his pencil. He looked up at Mac through his brows, staring at him quizzically. “You okay dude?” he asked, pausing his carving for a moment. 

Mac sighed, he bites the insides of his cheeks while he figures out how to answer. “I dunno, this weird thing between me and Dennis, like this fight we’re having or whatever, it’s sorta getting to me I think. I miss when we were friends. I know I have you, Charlie. But I dunno, I miss hanging out with someone different.”

Charlie nodded, “You just gotta get out of the house man, meet new people without me.” He continues sharpening, just barely missing the skin around his thumb and forefinger. 

“Dude be careful with that thing,” Mac said, nudging the foot that is resting against him. Charlie just rolled his eyes. 

“Yeah I’m pretty sure I know what I’m doing, I made like, a thousand of these in high school so.”

“Oh yeah I’m sorry ‘cause instead of using them for like, math tests and essays and shit, making them into knives is way more smarter.” 

Charlie furrows his brow, “Street smarts, Mac. You don’t learn street smarts in geometry class.”

Mac laughed, he buried his face in his hands and just let himself feel okay in the moment with his friend, hanging out in the afternoon with nothing to do but be with each other for hours on end. 

That night after Charlie had gone to bed, Mac went home. It was a lonely walk back, he could feel a hole smouldering into his heart with the absence of his friends presence. Sometimes Mac felt like he need somebody there at all times, like he couldn’t ever really be alone with himself. So instead of going back to an empty house he went walked right past its vacant stare towards this bar that was a couple blocks down the street. Outside there was a man standing out along the edge of the building, smoking a cigarette and letting the end cherry, setting his lips all fiery and aglow. Mac would watch the man make his way into the club, all the lights inside bleeding in into the soft parts of everyone's flesh. Mac stood across the street working up the nerve to step inside. He crossed the road and stepped into the building, standing frozen by the door so unsure of himself in this room full of strangers. He needed familiarity, something he could recognize. He found it somewhere at the edge of a bar where there was a woman who stood tall and handsome. Her hair fell in little waterfalls down by her shoulders and she had facial features that were bold and large. Her lips pursed as she scanned the room, dark eyes swimming in all those neon lights sweeping across the room, searching in prowess and power.

“You gonna just stand there all night?” she said to Mac. He hadn’t noticed her walk over.

He shook his head, still frozen with shock and awe. “Uh, no,” he decided and followed her through the crowd.

She handed him a drink and he had a couple more, about enough to make the walls of the room contort and bunch up around the corners. After Mac was good and drunk he walked out with that woman and let her shove him up against the wall the man had been smoking against just hours earlier. Her tongue dipped into his mouth as Mac shut his eyes and ignored the heat of the silver cross on his neck, burning and sweating against the skin over his heart as he faintly imagined her hands to be his. The woman gripped his jaw, pressing herself in closer and deeper and it settles just on the brink of too much. Mac stood there while she kissed him, frozen still with caution. 

“Kiss me back,” the woman said breathlessly, a flush of pink and red blooming across her skin with her hand still clutching the underside of his jaw. “Like you mean it,” she said to him and any apprehension Mac may have felt was momentarily washed away by the white clash of teeth and tongue. 

 

-

“I dunno it’s like, waking up and realizing you’ve been writing with the wrong hand your whole life,” Dennis said to Mac over the phone. “You know it just feels—it feels so right!” he spoke with passion in his voice, with stars in his eyes. Mac could somehow see them over the phone, he could hear the twitter of birds all light and airy through the speaker.

“Mhmm,” Mac muttered, moving around his bedroom and picking things up and admiring them in the soft afternoon light. He tried to keep himself busy and indifferent to Dennis, tried not to get too attached to whatever emotion he elicited over the phone. 

“I’m moving into my new place soon,” he said and suddenly Mac is so there and listening, he is snapped out of the self induced trance. 

“You’re doing what?”

“I bought an apartment the other day. Those dorms were, too small yanno? It was stifling, I need space. It so beautiful Mac you should come see it tonight, it’s a truly grand sight to see.”

As it turned out, Dennis’ idea of grand was a small two bedroom apartment in the southside of Philly. It was bare to its bones; nothing but a couple of boxes full of Dennis’ things that were all scattered across the floor. 

“It’s awesome dude,” Mac said, eyes trailing along the empty carcass of the apartment.

“Yeah,” he laughed. “Need a roommate soon though, wanna help me?” 

Mac shrugged against the rising pitfalls of jealousy swooping in and out of his blood and chest. “I dunno man—”

“Need her to be hot, big tits, big ass, small waist,” he blathered on, not even listening to Mac. “We could put out an ad in the newspaper tonight.” Dennis knew how to get him going, he knew exactly how to rile him up. He didn’t want some stranger in his house, he just wanted Mac, so Dennis had to make him jealous, had make him want it just because he couldn’t have it. 

Something in Mac sank when Dennis said that like he wasn't really built for these types of things anymore. There were flashes of a prom in nineteen ninety something, with his face tilted open wide to the ceiling of the gym while Dennis sulked outside. Mac thought back to a time when Dennis wouldn't so much as look at Mac if he didn't have something like weed or a smoke to give him in return. 

He quietly wondered what was so magnetic about Dennis that kept him coming back when there was nothing ever really there for him in the first place.

Mac wondered why he was still there on the couch that Dee had muscled into the room and set down in front of the window where the busy streets howled down below. The lights of the city illuminated the backs of their skulls, their faces all aglow from the flashlight lighting up the pages of a newspaper, the little print that detailed each woman seeking a room was glowing bright red in Mac’s retinas. There was a growing pile of empty bottles scattered around their feet, a half finished can slightly crushed in Mac's grip. He was feeling lighter and lighter with each sip, like if he closed his eyes he might float away from Dennis and all that jealousy boiling up inside.

He sighed and maybe his apparent disinterest was what caught Dennis’ attention. “What?” Dennis slurred, a bit more inebriated than Mac. “Are none of these women good enough for you?”

Mac stared at him blankly, his eyes glassy and wet with wanting. He did not answer him.

“What do you want then, man? What do you want ‘cos I just dont know.” Dennis’ eyes shifted, he keenly squinted at him, almost as though he could smell it through the booze on Mac's breath —the sudden wanting and plea. “Oh,” he muttered softly, like he’d found whatever he was searching for. Dennis leaned in so close to Mac that he could take in all the little freckles that dot the surface of his cheeks, so close that Mac could feel the heat radiating from Dennis’ own cheeks all flush with alcohol and nerves. Dennis’ hand fell to Mac’s thigh as he leaned in, pressing his lips to Mac’s cheek and giving a small kiss to the bone there. “This is what you want, Mac?” he spoke against his skin. Mac swallowed hard and kept his eyes stuck to the bare floor. “You remember how we'd get real close like this, way back in high school, don't you? This is what you want right?” 

Mac scorned him, a little breathless and a little love stricken. Being with Dennis was like a benign faith conjuring up all sorts of unholy ghosts. He was like religion; you don't question, you just follow, you just go through the movements in a way that feels so natural and wrong all at once and Mac wanted nothing more than to follow, to fall in time with his rhythm, but his willingness to defy God was weaker than his love for Him. 

Mac pushed him away and told him to go to bed. He didn’t know who he worshiped anymore. He had no idea what real love was. 

Mac fell asleep on the sofa and Dennis was nowhere to be found. The newspaper was lost somewhere in between the cushions, forgotten for as long was time would tell. Dennis left that night in a huff though Mac thinks he secretly likes the chase; that some corrupt part of Dennis liked the fact that Mac had the gall to say no, and that if he had been a little more drunk and a little more willing he might not have. Dennis knew that, he knew Mac’s inhibition and how easily it ebbed and flowed. Dennis knew exactly how to get him if he really wanted him.

Mac moved in that week. Dennis said it was too much upkeep on his own and Mac said he hated living at his parents place, so he piled all of his belongings into the Range Rover and they moved in together. Dennis promised it was a short term arrangement and that he was just waiting until he found a woman suitable to his needs, though Mac thinks Dennis secretly knew that day would never come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> decided to post chapters 2&3 early cos theyre short and i edited them faster than I intended to hehe, hope you enjoyed!


	3. Dance Because You Know This One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dennis ditches Mac at the prom, Dee has an unexpected encounter...

They sat outside the school all tucked away beneath the bleachers while the song of crickets and early summer or late spring cocooned around their bodies. Dennis raised the joint to his lips and exhaled like a holy matrimony to the air that was still warm at night. He looked so elegant and graceful, Mac thought to himself as he smoked away the last of his supply. 

“God I wish I was just getting wasted at home right now,” Dennis muttered, running his hand through the curls he’d spent so long styling and gelling earlier that evening. “But I mean what was I gonna do, say no to having sex with a hot chick on prom night? Yeah okay,” He snickered to himself, letting a light high creep up from his lungs into his head. 

The girl —Mac could not remember her name for the life of him— had asked Dennis out. The month prior to that, he’d declared prom to be a sham and made plans to get drunk in his basement with Mac who would bring him weed. They had a good night planned, just the two of them, but then this girl with her thick curves and bright smile touched Dennis’ arm and asked him if he’d go to the dance with her. So Mac decided he would be fine with it. He would resign himself to be cool, to understand the loyalty to a girl Dennis barely knew, that instead of trading glances and faint touches with Mac in his basement he would be having sex with her. Mac could almost respect that even. 

Dennis promised him that when he was done fucking her in the back of the Range Rover he would take Mac out and buy him dinner. So he would sit there and wait for Dennis out under the bleachers, he would watch him walk away towards the parking lot to meet his date beneath the lights strung up around the school, smoking his cigarettes to smother the jealousy he felt while he watched them lock arms. She was radiant, her dress was made out of silk or something fancy like that. Mac couldn’t help but think Dennis had an air about him like that too sometimes, he had this sort of feminine beauty to him. 

Mac sat outside and chain smoked until his lungs felt swollen and charred. He began to feel panicked for a moment, like Dennis might have really forgotten him this time. He checked his watch and it was thirty minutes till twelve —a half an hour after Dennis told him he would be back. Mac eyed the soft flickering lights of the school and stood up with a sigh, brushing the grass stains off of his pants. He was determined to find Dennis and tell him he was ready to go with or without him. He passed by the Range Rover in the parking lot and it was black inside, no sign of Dennis anywhere yet.

Unbeknownst to Mac, Dennis had been in the bathroom for forty five minutes just staring at himself in the mirror, his iron glare unwavering even when the doors opened and a few other people walked in. His prom date sat by herself beside the bowl punch, her eyes drifting towards the bathroom door where her date had been for the last half hour. 

She was so pretty and objectively Dennis knew that, anyone with eyes could see it. Her little glass slippers like a true princess pared with a soft pink gown, her brown hair falling in chunky curls by her shoulders. Her face was soft and giving, lips always poised in a perfect pout and her olive green eyes shimmering with the rest of her. Dennis shook himself awake as he willed himself to not imagine what that silk might feel like on his own skin, willed himself to instead be intrigued by what was beneath her dress. He walked out to go and get her but instead saw Mac standing next to her. His heart froze solid in his chest when he saw them; Mac was laughing and she is smiling, they look like a real match together. Dennis was heartbroken or confused or betrayed. He couldn’t really tell. He felt angry though, he felt something like a snarl pull across his lips. He stormed off towards the parking lot stifling a sob that began to break.

-

 

Dee was enamoured by this woman standing by the punch bowl all shining and glittering like the lights circling the room. She was like stars that were hanging all alone in the dark sky. The woman stood there, saying goodbye to some guy that looked as though he did not belong there to begin with, someone who looked familiar but Dee could not place in the dim light of the gym. She couldn’t feel herself moving, couldn’t feel herself drifting across the gym floor right towards her. Dee felt as though her heart was about to burst, the cold quick fire of her nerves racing up and down her spine as she got closer and closer, watching the details of her face get bolder and brighter. There was this certain edge about her that Dee could taste, a certain spit fire that most would overlook. The woman caught her eyes; olive green sparking and glinting in her wake, her lips like a parting the sea of pink and white all flush in the moonlight. 

It felt in slow motion, so surreal that she began to feel weak as she drew nearer, her head growing light and dizzy. She hardly even noticed her heal catching on the hem of her gown as she tripped and fell flat on her face, right at the foot of the woman’s glass slipper that stared her down, mocking her for her efforts.

“Oh my gosh,” the woman said, rushing over towards Dee and wrapping her hand around her arm. Dee thought she might nearly burst into flames at the tenderness of her touch. “Are you alright?” she asked, so soft and affectionate, her voice was honey or like butter melting on the heat and flush of Dee’s skin.

“I’m fine, I’m alright,” Dee sputtered. She stood up and brushed off the front of her dress, cursing God for her clumsiness. 

“Do you want to get some air?” she asked as she placed her hand on Dee’s shoulder to keep her steady, mistaking her love struck glaze for a drunken stupor. 

Her words falter over her tongue before she sputters out, “Y—yeah I’d like that. To go outside, I mean. Yeah.” 

The woman's cheeks meet her eyes, the blush she must’ve applied early that evening grow a few shades pinker. “Okay then,” she says, extending her arm for Dee to take.


	4. Between a Girl and a Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mac and Dennis make each other jealous (ment. of implied sex and drug use)

The first time Dennis tried crack, maybe he hated it, or maybe he liked the way he could run on empty for days. But mostly he hated it. And maybe Mac hated it more because he spent his nights watching Dennis just nod in and out of consciousness, or maybe he just hated drugs in general because he didn’t understand why you couldn’t just get by on a shot of vodka. 

The only thing Dennis really liked about crack was how absolutely void it made him feel. He’d always felt like his emotions were too present, always simmering on top like a geyser waiting to implode. Dennis really liked how, when he was high, he was allowed to forget all of the things that liked to haunt him. When he was out of his mind and stir crazy he could forget that his father was back, that his parents were divorced, and he could completely forget about Mac’s obsessive need to prove his heterosexuality. 

He liked it most of all when he was fucking girls because he could bring himself to look at their faces and sometimes catch their eyes when his own were blown out wide open, all dilated with the high. Dennis wasn’t stupid or in denial like Mac; he knew very well that he didn’t like women. But when he was like this he could at least numb himself to it, sex was just sex to him when he was like this, and maybe he needed crack to do it but everyone’s got their thing that gets them off. 

Everyone's got their little quirks, Dennis rationalized as he callously rocked back and forth above another woman he couldn’t remember the name of. He'd taken her home from a party in one of the frat houses, she had been impressed that he had his own apartment. She moaned and Dennis put his hand over her mouth. She thought it was kinky but he just wanted to shut her up. The sex was lackluster, there were no fireworks or heat in his stomach. It just was somebody to get close to without feeling vulnerable, someone he could be near to without the risk of getting hurt. He doesn’t conceptualize that though, he doesn’t have the mind for thinking about things like that when he’s losing himself to grey matter all vacant and spacey in his head.

His dipped his head down low, “Fuck me,” he moaned against her collar bone. It was on accident. He had no idea what he’s saying, he was just saying things to hear himself talk. 

“What?’ she asked, and they both came to a halt. She had her hands wrapped around his neck and whatever sounds she’d been making before had ceased. 

He sobered a little as he looked down at her, his head swimming in lucid thought as her confused facial features twisted together in small tinges of disgust. Everything suddenly dropped an octave in his mind. “Uh, nothing,” he said, lips pressing together tightly. “Just uh, just move past it.” His words were soft and shaky but she heard him. She shook her head to loosen the confusion etching itself into her brow, and now that Dennis could see a little more clearly he decided he was done looking at her. “Turn around,” he mumbled. He fucked her from behind and closed his eyes, hoping the creak of his bed frame would drown out her moans. 

He waited for her to gather up her clothes. She didn’t look at him as she left his bedroom clutching a jacket to her chest, leaving him all strung out and unsatisfied. 

Dennis decided he hated crack, he hated the feeling he now associated with it. How could he be so far broken that not even drugs can fill the void inside of himself? What is wrong with him? He thought maybe he could lose big chunks of himself until he became unrecognizable, until he couldn't see himself in his reflection anymore. He thought maybe if he cotorized his brain with chemicals he could be pleasantly spacey and happy forever, but he was even too broken and miserable for that it seemed.

Mac saw the hole growing inside of him, how it smoldered around the edges like a burning field, its flames swallowing up anything that once grew lush and green and reducing it to hot coal. Mac saw Dennis come down a few nights later, saw how he would shake and shiver beneath his bed sheets. Mac would come in with ice or a hot towel for him, whichever one the fever would dictate. On the days Dennis could stand it Mac would crawl into bed with him until he grew too tender to be touched again. Dennis could be such a delicate thing — the irony in using something to feel nothing that in the end makes you feel everything just slightly too much. 

“Remind me to never touch crack again,” Dennis gritted out through his clenched jaw. “Remind me next time Mac, that crack is wack—” he winced, inhaled sharply through his teeth alongside a shudder pulling through his aching body— “ it’s all the way fucking wack.”

Mac just laughed, pushing Dennis’ damp curls off of his forehead and sighs. He brushed his thumb along his cheek bone like he was trying to savor moments like these where he had an excuse to get close. Dennis shivered and Mac got up to get him another washcloth. 

 

-

 

Listening to Dennis have sex every other night was growing insufferable. Now that they owned a bar it seemed Dennis felt like he had some obligation to fulfill; which was to fuck as many girls as possible. Mac stayed in his room, he pressed his head into the pillows and tried not to listen to the high pitched moans and drawn out whines coming from the other room. 

Dennis had sex with women like he wanted people to know, like it was his whole intent and purpose to let everyone around them know he was in fact, getting laid. Mostly Dennis wanted just Mac to know; he wanted him to feel the weight of the mattress caving in on its frame and to smell the sweat sticking to his skin. He wanted Mac to taste him through the walls, for Mac to imagine himself beneath him as he rode Mac slow and deliberate, his hands gripping Dennis’ hips. The next day Mac would always ask him how it was, if he liked it, because if he was being completely honest he wanted to know and he wanted to see. 

“She was so hot dude,” Dennis said the next morning at the table. He leaned back in his chair, cool and seductive like he’s always been. He sipped his coffee and stared Mac down from the edge of the rim. 

“I know dude you’ve said that like a hundred times.” Mac was frustrated, he felt like Dennis was bragging. Even still, he couldn’t help but soften when he saw the way the morning light cupped Dennis’ cheeks in a gentle touch and stroke. His beauty could be so magnifying and Mac would try so hard to repel it. 

Dennis laughed. “Jeez fine. I just know you like hearing about it is all.” He said this so casually Mac could almost hardly even breathe. “Maybe you’d be less bitter if you got laid more often.”

Anger flickered inside of Mac’s chest, white hot flashes crossing through his eyes and jumping to his manhood defense, “Fuck you dude, I get laid plenty.” 

Dennis snickered, “Yeah sure, whatever you say man. If I didn’t know any better, I’d start thinkin’ things.” He paused as if to make sure Mac had heard him, his thumb stopping on the handle of his mug as he looked up to see Mac’s face all flushed with anger, something like a white hot rage licking up his spine.

Mac felt his body go cold, “What?” he asked him.

“Oh nothing,” Dennis said, shaking his head, loving the fact that he could get such a rise out of him. “It’s just a little gay, don’t ya think? To never bring any women around, I mean.” 

Mac lowered his stare. He was like a wild animal rising on his hind legs, feeling something like hatred spew from his lips. “Maybe I just don’t feel the need to prove it by shoving it in my roommates face like some fuckin’ fag.” 

Dennis stared at him point blank as if he’d caught him, had him snared in a wrought iron trap. He smiled at Mac and it is sickly and smug; Mac wanted to punch it right off his mouth. “There it is,” Dennis said quiet with complacency. 

“Fuck you man,” Mac shouted, shoving himself away from the table so forcefully that the coffee in Dennis’ mug sloshed out of the sides like a ship floating wildly at sea. 

Dennis stared hard at the mess, felt his grin cementing into his face as he heard the door slam. He relished in the fact that he had such control over the rise and falls of Mac’s emotion. Maybe it was the feeling of power or maybe it was the excitement from the manipulation, either way it left him buzzing. 

Mac stalked through the streets, walking until the heat in his lungs was replaced by the cold air. He was desperate to prove Dennis wrong and to prove himself right and so his mind went to the woman at the club he met a few weeks ago; she’d given him her number which he had used one or two times. He was a red blooded man, he wanted women, he liked women, and he could prove that if he wanted to. He just wasn’t insecure like Dennis was, that’s all. 

He met her outside of a shitty fast food restaurant. He noticed she’d gotten her hair cut to her chin recently and a piercing on her lip. Her roots had begun to grow in, said she was tired of being a blond. Mac did not comment on her appearance or offer any compliments, he remained semi-oblivious when she bent over the table and pushed her breasts together so that they were spilling out over her low cut crop top. He ate his fries and she let him have her’s. Mac let the woman run her hand over his leg under the table, he let her take him out of the booth towards her car parked outside. She kissed him hard and fast and deep, her new piercing biting into the soft flesh of his lip, hard enough that he could taste the metal on his tongue. 

“Ow,” he grunted, wincing a little bit. 

She pulled back and mumbled an apology while she crawled over the median to get in his lap, clumsily unzipping his jeans and sliding his shirt up over his head in the process. She turned the radio up —some rap song with a heavy bass vibrating the speakers of her car— pulling her hair back in a ponytail and leaning back in to kiss him.

“Get in the back,” she whispered hotly, her tongue sliding against her bottom lip as she watched him struggle, her dark eyes buried behind her cruel laughter. Mac ignored her, craning his neck up so he could kiss her again as he fell into the backseat. He was pressed against the back window with his legs stretched out over the seat bench. She sat across from him up on her thighs, panting deep and heavy, her breasts rising with each inhalation. She reached up over her head and removed her top, staring at Mac half naked in front of him, the both of them just sort of just looking and not moving.

“What’s wrong hun?” she asked with that sort of Brooklyn swing to her voice running through Mac’s brain. 

He sat there for a moment, a little breathless and shirtless with his jeans undone. Here was this beautiful woman with her tits right out in front of him and yet he couldn't make himself do anything to her. He was frozen, his brain screaming for him to prove Dennis wrong —and it was only the thought of him that propelled Mac forward. He leaned over real slow, pressed his lips to the swell of her chest and mumbled something like, “touch yourself,” against them. He was running on autopilot, imaging the things he might do if she were him. He reached into his own jeans, wrapped his hand around her wrist and mumbled something like, “touch me.” 

He barely so much as looked at her the entire time, she was panting beneath him but he had his eyes shut tight, his face pressed into her shoulders while she got them both off. He grabbed her by the base of her neck as he felt himself come undone, imaging if there was a bigger hand wrapped around him, imagining those whines as deep groans. Maybe this was completely and morally wrong but right then and there with his whole body buzzing, sitting pretty right on the edge of absolution, he couldn’t seem to formulate a coherent thought other than, “keep going.”

Perhaps she understood his hesitancy as reluctance or avoidance, or maybe she just thought he was a lazy lover, but either way she was too good for him and they both knew that.   
She dropped him off and kissed him on the cheek, making sure to apply her lipstick good and heavy before doing so as if she knew he had something to prove. Mac scowled a little but let her do it.

“Have a good night sugar,” she said as she waved. “Take care.” The goodbye felt permanent and maybe that was for the best.

Dennis saw the lipstick mark, he saw the tousled hair and wrinkled shirt. Mac didn’t say a single word to him, he didn’t sneer or laugh when he saw the jealousy brimming inside of Dennis. He just went to his room and laid down, pulling the covers up over his head as he tried to forget all the things he’d subconsciously gave into today.


	5. Meet Me in the Hallway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A dynamic shifts between Mac and Dennis after an incident in his childhood bedroom, something new and inviting. Also Mac is bad at texting. (drug use, they smoke weed yo)

Dennis could hear Mac’s voice muffled and low through the walls. He talked a lot while the voice on the other end seemed to never speak at all. Dennis opened the door to his room, stood in the door frame with his arms cradling the wood trim as he watched Mac pace around their living room. He sounded worried, his voice was strained as he pulled his hands through his hair, sighing heavy into the phone.

“Alright,” he mumbled. “I’ll be there tomorrow.” Mac hung up and threw himself down onto the sofa, exhaustion raking through his features. 

“What’s up?” Dennis asked, moving towards the couch, shoving Mac’s feet off of the arm rest so he could sit down. 

“My mom,” he replied vaguely. Maybe he just didn’t want to elaborate but something in Dennis’ face told him he didn’t really have a choice. “She’s really sick.”

“Oh,” he said, nodding his head. He didn’t have much sympathy or empathy to offer him. He just sat there pursing his lips and waiting for Mac to say something, maybe get something off his chest. 

“I need to be there to help her so—”

“Oh yeah sure, I can bring you over tomorrow if you want man, we can bring soup or whatever,” Dennis interrupted, assuming what Mac was going to ask. “You need to get your own ride after though ‘cos I’m not shipping you back and forth all damn week.” He chuckled, hoping Mac would laugh back. Mac sat up instead and looked down at the floor like he had something bad to tell him.

“Yeah man I know, it’s just, I was thinkin’ maybe I’d stay there for a while. Just until she gets better and all that.” 

Dennis gets it, immediately standing up from the couch as he laughed nervously, hand rubbing the back of his head. “Oh! Yeah no that―” he laughed again— “That makes a lot more sense yeah, you do that for sure.” 

Mac sat there looking at him, brows furrowed as he tried to figure out why Dennis was acting so delirious. “Uh huh,” he said, words slowed with confusion. He stood up and walked towards his room, peering his head out one last time, “I do need a ride there tomorrow though,” he said pointing a finger towards Dennis who was still standing there with his cheeks bleeding red. 

“Sure, yeah okay.” He watched Mac duck back into his room and he silently cursed himself for being clingy, for being so wanting, and so attached at the hip. He’d never known himself to be like this, to always expect somebody to be there. He’d never needed anyone like this before. It was petrifying. 

It’d barely been a week of only seeing Mac for a few hours during the day. He saw him at the bar when there wasn’t stuff to be doing, when there wasn't beers to be drinking and schemes to be planning. Dennis rarely saw him alone and he hadn’t realized how accustomed he’d gotten to it, to seeing Mac alone in the light of their apartment, all soft and muted for his eyes only. There was something about that with which he missed with all of his heart. He felt it ache particularly at night when he couldn’t hear the Tv on, blaring some horrifically loud movie that would keep him up for an hour or two before he inevitably joined him there on the couch. Seeing him for a few hours during the day with everybody watching was just not enough. 

Mac texted him sometimes though. It would be late at night when Dennis was just about to fall asleep. His phone buzzed on the nightstand, he squinted against the light of the screen feeling suddenly so awake when he saw who it was. 

Mac had only been gone for four days and Dennis missed him, hard. 

“whts up” The text read with no punctuation or emotion. Dennis smiled, harder. 

He unplugged his phone and held it close to his face, sitting back on his elbows as he wrote back, “Sleeping.” Waiting a moment to add, “Why aren’t you?”

“idk, cudnt. this houseis rlly lonely at nite haha”

“I bet,” Dennis replied, debating on just leaving it at that until he quickly typed, “It's lonely here too. Too quiet without you making noise all the time.” It was so quick his brain hardly registered the thought as he sent it. He waited anxiously for a reply.

“haha pussy”

God, Dennis thought. Texting him was probably the most obnoxious thing in the entire world. Still he couldn’t help but smile through the phone. They began texting like this every night, just about little things the other had missed throughout the day. 

There was this one particularly long day where Mac couldn’t show up to the bar because his mother had fallen in the shower and needed him there, and despite her profuse reluctance, Mac stayed home. Dennis could hardly stand that day, a whole twenty-four hours without seeing Mac even once was unheard of for them.

“missed u 2day ://” Mac typed, sighing to himself in the dark of his room. His childhood bedroom was much smaller than he remembered. He was laid out in a sleeping bag on the floor as his only mattress was still at Dennis’ apartment. Everything felt just a little bit emptier and a little bit lonelier in that room without him. Mac shifted on the floorboards and winced at the way it dig into his spine. “sry i cudnt b there i feal bad”

“Don't, I missed you too,” Dennis replied a few moments later. Mac's grin was illuminated by the shifting blue light from the phone.

“whn can i see u.?” he asked, feeling braver, bolder. 

“I dunno man. When do you want to see me?” 

“tmrw. if u can swing it.”

“Needy,” Dennis typed back and Mac rolled his eyes, laughing to no one. 

“Fuk u >:(”

Dennis felt his heart flutter when the message popped up on the screen; it was stupid, so stupid but so incredibly endearing. Dennis felt safer behind the screen, like as long as he couldn't see him pout and be fake mad at him in the flesh it would be alright. 

“I'm way out of your league anyway dude.” 

“u wish bitchhh”

Dennis smiled a little too much, a little too excited to see somebody who he’s seen almost everyday for the past decade or so. “Goodnight loser. See you tomorrow.”

The blur of big brick buildings and treescapes gave way to chain link fences and broken sidewalks. Dennis made his way to Mac’s old house, tapping his thumbs on the steering wheel to a synth sickened melody. 

Mac made up his room for him. He wasn't sure why as there wasn't much to clean anyway. He was a pretty neat and organized person, he likes his things a certain way, he figured maybe Dennis admired that about him, or maybe he thought nothing of it at all. Mac still fussed around the house as he anxiously waited for him to get there. A whole twenty-four hours without him had him feeling like his limbs might catch fire at any moment. 

“Stop it,” Mrs. Mac grumbled around a cigarette that hung halfway out of her mouth. She swatted at her son as he tried to help her get into her chair.

“Ma’, let me help you—” she hit him again and this time it landed— “Hey, jeez okay. I’m just trying to help God dammit.”

“Well stop tryin'—”

Dennis knocked on the door cutting through their argument. Mrs. Mac glared at her son, silently telling him he’d better go answer that door or she’d do a whole lot worse than smack him. Dennis opened the door when he heard Mac shout for him to let himself in. There was something nervous to his frame today, something Mac had never had before. 

“Hey man,” Mac said, half looking at him as he went to make his mother a cup of coffee.

“Hey,” Dennis huffed through a laugh. “Hi Mrs. Mac,” he said, nodding towards her. She barely even grunted at him. 

Mac handed her the coffee and she swatted him away again, “Oh my God okay. I'm going then,” Mac huffed as he grabbed Dennis by the arm, pulling him towards the door. “Call me if you need anything.” 

“Bye Mrs. Mac!” Dennis shouted abruptly as he was dragged out the door. “She's not much for conversation, huh?” he asked, trying to ease some of the tension that has risen in Mac's shoulders. He looked so tense, like he might burst apart at the seams if Dennis touched him the wrong way. 

Mac climbed into the passenger seat of the Range Rover and buried his head in his hands. “She's being so difficult, I just don't understand why she wont let me help. She needs it, she just won't ever admit it and it drives me nuts.”

They sat there for a moment, Dennis not knowing any words of solace or comfort to offer. He knew physicality, he knew touch and gestures. So instead of talking he reached out towards Mac's shoulder and touched him for a moment with all the hesitancy of a first kiss. Mac sighed, let his shoulders fall with the ease it brought.

Dennis let his hands fall back down to the steering wheel and offered, “You wanna go get wasted in the park?” It was something they were used to doing, something they knew was good.

“More than anything yeah,” Mac answered. 

Something about the way the light was touching the hillside, about the way it was reaching out through the breaks in the trees in a blinding and brilliant panorama, almost like it was bursting out from the heart of the earth itself. Something about Mac in the sunlight made Dennis feel warm and inviting, all lovely and safe. It was a strange and foreign feeling inside his chest. He didn’t know how to name it or how to feel it, he only knew how to sit with it there in the moment with Mac on the hill.

Mac drank his beer and pulled his knees up to his ribs, wrapping himself in his arms and closing his eyes to the warmth birthed from the sun setting way out in the distance. There was a rush of wind beside them and Mac shivered, just slightly, but it was enough for Dennis to press closer to him. He wasn’t brave enough to offer his arm around his shoulder or to give his jacket to him, but it was just enough so that he would feel it. Mac didn’t acknowledge the gesture, it was like he was afraid he would scare it away, but he was a little braver than Dennis. He was brave enough to put his head on his shoulder, moving slowly until he was sure it was okay, finally resting himself in the crook of Dennis’ neck and joint. 

Dennis sighed and looked down at his legs splayed out in the grass, his knees arched like bridges towering over the sea. His arms were bent to accommodate Mac's head, and he wanted nothing more than to lay his head down too but he refrained, his body much too weighed down with hesitancy to do so.

He spoke instead, daring to be the one that breaks their silence, “I'm sorry, you know, that you have to go through all that stuff with your mom.” It took him all day and five beers to come up with that but it was there, and he hoped Mac could see it. Dennis felt him sigh.

“It's fine. She's always been stubborn.”   
Dennis said nothing to him. He felt fear rearing its disfigured head inside of himself. He was petrified that he was made from nothingness, steady with the fragility of glass. How could he ever be enough for Mac when he’d been hollowed out at birth. 

“But I’ve got you and Charlie though, and Dee, even though she’s a bitch most of the time. Charlie does what he can, and it’s kinda funny because I’ll text him about something and he won’t respond, and then I’ll have to help him read the text the next day or something.” 

Mac laughed but Dennis felt something in his heart wanting to burst, not from anger or hatred, but from something tinged with affection. Dennis has seen how gentle Mac could be with Charlie. Whenever he would help him sound out a word or encourage his stupid ideas no matter how incomprehensible they were. Dennis smiled, huffed a little laugh along with Mac even though he really wanted to tell him that’s probably one of the sweetest things he’d ever heard.

Mac sighed and lean into Dennis a little more, “Can't wait to get back to the apartment though, this sucks ass.” And there was something about Mac calling it the apartment that made Dennis smile. 

“What?” Mac asked, looking up at him a little. The attention only made Dennis chuckle more. 

“Nothing man, I just, I can't wait either is all,” he said.

Mac shifted so his cheek was back on his shoulder, laughing with him. “Right well, If you think I wanna come back ‘cause of you, you're dead wrong. I only want to ‘cause I miss sleeping on an actual mattress, the floor is ruining my fucking back.” 

“Uh huh,” Dennis hummed, chuckling deep and low while something simmered in his chest. “You should get an air mattress then dummy.”

Mac said nothing because he was right, but then he'd have no excuse to want to come back, he'd actually have to admit he missed Dennis if he did that. So instead they sat there quietly in the dying light of the sun, hardly touching each other at all, but doing so with such delicacy and fragility as if one or the other might break to pieces if it was anything more.

The ride home was quiet, neither of them wanted to leave. Mac invited Dennis up to see his old bedroom and Mrs. Mac watched them from the corner of her eye. Dennis wasn't quite sure how to read her expression that followed them up the stairs, it looked a little too knowing of things they were only half aware of themselves.

Mac’s room looked so odd, like it'd been hollowed out and was now just an empty husk of a creature shallow breathing out on the sidewalk. The light that was quietly succumbing outside seemed to swallow up what little there was in the room; Mac's sleeping bag and a dresser that wouldn't fit in Dennis’ car when they moved Mac in all those years ago. There were curtains that strained the shadows, thinning it out so it was a little more bearable on their eyes.

Mac switched on the light and rummaged through the dresser drawers. “Looks weird huh,” he mumbled with his back turned to Dennis.

“Yeah,” he said, looking in the vicinity of where Mac’s bed used to be. He felt like, if he squinted hard enough, he'd be able to see them when they were much younger. When they used to share that small twin bed and Dennis would hold his breath so Mac didn't think he breathed too loudly or something like that. He felt as though he could hear their hushed voices and faint laughter entombed in the walls; remnants of all the times they had both been so careful not to wake Mac’s dad up. Back in high school Dennis felt like he had a lot more to lose by sharing a bed with Mac, felt like his future depended on that being a secret. Now that he's here, in the future, he's not so sure if anything turned out how he thought it would anyway.

“Shit,” Mac cussed, pulling Dennis back to the here and now. “I found it.” He pulled out a baggie that was pushed to the back of the dresser, a green lighter floating around inside. 

“Dude how old is that?” Dennis asked, pulling himself down to the sleeping bag alongside Mac. He watched as Mac methodically rolled a joint, his practiced hands carefully packing and folding the paper. 

“Old enough,” Mac said as he pursed the joint between his lips, snapping his fingers for the lighter. Dennis pulled it out if the bag and sparked a flame with two or three clicks, leaning into him as he held the flame to the smoldering paper between his lips. Mac took a long drag, breathing in a deep exhalation as his lungs shook from old smoke. His eyes began to water, coughing and sputtering and laughing at the look Dennis was giving him. “Oh that's good shit,” he huffed though a cough and a laugh, passing it to a reluctant Dennis.

He hesitantly took a puff, mimicking Mac's coughing fit. “Oh my God dude, that's horrendous,” he choked as he passed it back, his shoulders shaking with his coughing fit.

They sit there, passing the joint back and forth between trembling fingers, waiting until their lungs began to open up to the burn ripping through their chests. Dennis felt light and airy, felt a good high swirling and encompassing his skull, cocooning around the pink matter like a small animal curled up in its nest. Dennis tilted his head back towards the ceiling and laughed mindlessly, just because he could. He treasured this lack of inhibition, this momentary willingness to let words loose and slip through whatever filter was employed in his sober state of mind. It was this shiver, this ache born at the creek of wanting and needing, Dennis was so high and out of his mind that something so dark and needy overcame him in the dim light of Mac’s childhood bedroom.

“What wrong?” Mac asked him, his words floating out into the empty space around them.

“I dunno,” he said with his eyes wide enough so that his pupils did not touch the lids. He ran his hands through his hair with fervor, feeling this thing well inside of him with the same sort of ache that rumbled in his chest constantly. The kind that kept him bedridden when he was left alone for too long, the kind that kept him always needing and wanting for something more, that kept him awake in the night crying and reaching out for something. He didn’t know how to name it or how to feel it, didn’t know how to roll it around in the palm of his hands and ask it. He only knew how to sit with it there in the moment on Mac’s bedroom floor. 

Dennis couldn’t feel it when he grabbed Mac’s arm that was now placed on Dennis’ shoulder, he couldn't feel it when he leaned in, his limbs gone cold from the rush of fear and nerves rolling through him. He could feel his lips though, he felt them burning hot with wanting that something —that keening pliancy melting into the spacious husk inside of himself. Dennis let his high pull him in closer to the flushed of Mac’s body, leaning into Mac’s hand brushing across his cheek with the same carefulness he’d rolled the joint with moments before. Dennis didn’t know how to feel being subject to the tenderness Mac reserved only for special things like that.

Their mouths hardly ever moved but Dennis felt him, he felt his heart beating quiet and alive against his hand pressed to his chest. Mac breathed life into his burned and scarred lungs, a rush of cool in the heat of a skittish uncertainty. They were there with blood and nervousness pounding in their ears.

Dennis let out something between a shudder and a sigh, holding himself still against Mac’s chest with his hands tightly gripping the collar of his shirt. “Christ, Mac,” he whispered, saying his name and the Holy Spirit’s with a similar cadence. 

“I missed this,” Mac admitted. He didn’t want to remember this like he faintly recalled the messy encounter months ago on the couch. He wanted to wake up tomorrow with missing pieces inside his head, for this tender memory to be black spots in the fuzzy spaces of his brain. He was drunk and high enough to admit he missed him, he was inebriated enough to let his mind drift back to high school when they would be like this under the bleachers, all secret and stolen away. He was drunk and high enough to admit he missed it, needed it, wanted it. There was always tomorrow to forget.

“Me too,” Dennis whispered. He held his head bent by the curve of Mac’s jaw, keeping his eyes closed like he couldn’t bear to look at them together directly in the light, like it would hurt too bad to stare at Mac’s open and eager eyes. 

Dennis thought back to Mac in his dorm, another instance where he’d just almost had him. We could be happy like this. And maybe they could’ve been if it was a different time, a different life. But this is the way things are and how they will always be. They will always have this careful amount of allotted time together spent wildy and ecstatically until it inevitably burnt out. 

Dennis gripped Mac’s bicep a little tighter, a little more panicked than before. “I gotta go, I think,” he slurred, still not able to feel parts of his body.

“Okay,” Mac said as he let him go, his arms falling back down to his sleeping bag that had bunched up around his legs. 

Downstairs Mac’s mother sat in front of the Tv. It was like she was carved from stone in that spot in the living room and hadn’t moved a joint or muscle in centuries since she was built.

“Bye, Mrs. Mac,” Dennis mumbled and she grunted back. Dennis quietly wondered if she knew, or if she’d ever suspected. He wondered what she thought about it if she did. 

Dennis took a shower that night, one that was long and slow. He stumbled out of his grass stained jeans and got caught in his shirt, glancing at his tired eyes in the fogging mirror. The hot water felt good on his permanently strained muscles, he felt like he was covered in sweat and grime though he couldn’t figure why he felt so dirty. Flickers of Mac’s lips brushing against his in the dark wandered around his head —once or twice or three times in high school, a few in the dorm, and once today. He missed it, and truthfully he wanted more than that. So who was he to run from his desires, to tell them they were dirty and wrong?

He shut his eyes and lowered his head to the shower wall, taking himself in his hands for a moment and giving way to a soft sigh. He might still be a little drunk, but he let that haze sit in his lower belly. He let it carry him from the shower to his bed, his hair still curled and dripping wet onto his sheets. He called Mac and sighed into the phone for him, breathing out heavy while he asked him to touch himself in places he wished he could —quietly, carefully and secretly. He hoped he would still have the gall to be like this with him again, huffing into the receiver while he talked about kissing him over and over and over until white lights exploded beneath his eyelids, shuddering while he breathed Mac’s name with all the fury of a small stutter of wind. 

 

-

 

There is something wrong with Dennis, Dee thought. He was somehow softer, more innocuous, a bit lighter and fuller. It was slight and almost missable, but she saw it whenever he was standing in the right light, or perhaps it was whenever Mac was there with his arms around his shoulder, leaning into her brothers chest, his face lit up with a smile. There was something different about the way they moved with each other, about the way Mac would stand shoulder to shoulder with Dennis, how his hands looked like they were aching to reach out towards something. 

Mac came back home a week or so ago and Dennis had been the most miserable son of a bitch until then. That ravenous bite seemed to be eased by a wave of Mac’s hands and smile. 

“What’s with those two,” Dee would ask Charlie, keeping herself busy by wiping down an already cleaned glasses. 

Charlie would just shrug. He was more observant than people gave him credit for. He saw things that would otherwise go unnoticed. He had an affliction for small invisible creatures; like talking to the rats that seemed to materialize out of thin air and then dissipate just as quickly, or the homeless under the bridge that have melded into the concrete to anyone else. Charlie saw all of the things that seemed to drift by others peripheral. He was like a child that is seen but never heard, having the luxury of being underestimated, of having others let their guard down around him because it is the assumption that he doesn’t know better anyhow. 

Charlie has seen Mac and Dennis; what Dee was just realizing has been common knowledge to Charlie for a long time, perhaps since their senior year of high school. He has seen them soft and quiet in ways Deandra did not know existed within her brother who has always been stone and cold. Charlie could see it though, he was allowed to know it because Dennis didn’t expect him to understand. Dennis confided in him more often than he’d like to admit; drunkenly crying over the phone because of some emptiness that was steadily building inside of himself, sure that one day it would crux and he would burst. Charlie and Dennis were two opposite ends of a spectrum, and therefore had nothing to compete with. So Dennis let Charlie see him cry and shout and scream. Charlie knew better than anyone —even more than Mac at times— how Dennis could be and feel and see. 

“Hey man,” Charlie said to him one day outside of the bar in the back alley. Dennis was smoking, filling his mouth with white and exhaling out of the sides of his lips. He offered Charlie a puff which he gladly took. 

“Hey,” Dennis said, quiet and refined. He scuffed his shoes on the pavement and crossed his arms over his chest, perhaps holding in his blood and guts like they might come spilling out at any moment. Dennis was so fond of protecting himself in that way. “Is Dee acting weird or is it just me?” he asked suddenly, voice thick with worry. 

“Just you,” Charlie reassured because he knew Dennis was just looking for him to say what he wanted to hear. Besides that, Charlie didn’t really want to disturb whatever new thing Dennis had, because he knew how he was like a frightened cat, that if he was ever seen or caught he’d run off with his tail tucked between his legs. “She’s being such a bitch lately though,” Charlie said, “Probably PMSing hard.” 

Dennis chuckled. “Yeah,” he sneered. “She’s such a bitch.” It was typical behavior from him, but the sentiment felt more like a thank you, in Dennis’ own twisted and misogynistic way. 

 

-

 

The woman who was all delicate and shining in her pink silk had Dee pressed firmly up against the wall. She kissed her with ferocity and vigor despite all of her dainty charm. Dee moaned as her hands twisted in the woman's brown locks. Her lipstick tasted like cherry, all balmy and sweet. 

Dee’s mind drifted from her body pressed up against that wall all fast and hard. Her thoughts wandered to the girl she’d left inside, to the deft and deliberate glare Dee had thrown her as she was taken by the hand of a woman she’d just met. This was an act of revenge on both sides; the woman kissing her all wanton and desperately was doing it as to dig the sharp end of her blade into her Dee’s brother’s back. Dee was coming undone beneath her as to dig her own knife between the other girl’s shoulder blades. 

Deandra recalled a few hours before when she had that girl alone in the bathroom, how her shoulders had been exposed in that dress that would not come off fast enough. 

“Did you get stood up too?” the woman asked Dee, her lips finding their way to Dee’s neck. 

She gasped softly, hands gripping the woman's shoulders for support. “Yeah,” she mumbled.

“Revenge sex is hot,” she said and Dee could only whole heartedly agree, moving hot and vivid against her. 

Somewhere on a hillside Dennis was exploding in tiny little increments, abandonment bubbling up from the split of his lips. He shuddered and shook with all this ferocity and there was nothing that could calm the swell of anguish. 

 

-

 

Mac found himself pressed up against a wall again, a common occurrence in his life as of late. Dennis was there beneath his pulse, that shape of his lips casting purple and blue hues that would blossom across Mac’s collar bone; Mac had made him promise to do that where it wouldn't show.

Dennis clung to Mac with such fervency, rocking back and forth into his body and groaning, “Fuck me,” quietly but unashamed this time. Mac flipped them and there was no confusion adorning itself in his brow, it was pure want that plastered itself across his face. 

Mac had come back home a few days ago. They didn’t speak about what happened, all Dennis knew was that he remembered it and he wanted it and he was scared of it. He would lie awake at night and stare at his ceiling, trying not to think of Mac’s lips pressed so lightly, with all the gentleness and hesitancy in the world. They’d kissed once or twice before but never like that, never in a way that they would be able to remember because they knew it’d be too painful to forget the next day. There was always so much distance between them when they were younger, Mac was always working and Dennis was away at school, there were ways they could be apart. But now Mac was here, he was only a room away and it took all but two nights of him being back before Dennis crept into Mac’s bed and kissed him, told him how it didn’t have to mean anything, it could just be for the night. 

This was so new for them; something they’d never dared to do before, to indulge so hard and fast without hesitance. It was as if Mac was shaken by a sinister entity or maybe by something a little more heavenly. It was hard to tell with his head dipped low between Dennis’ thighs, his hands pulling at the back of Mac’s head with the arch of his back like grand sweeping architecture. Mac watched a possession take hold of Dennis’ body and there was nothing he could do to stop the whites of his eyes from rolling back into his head. Being with Dennis, all cooped up in the heat of their apartment, it was like religion, and Mac followed every moment he made in perfect rhythm and time. It was bittersweet really how they sometimes took their time with one another, the tenderness they would sometimes take to whenever their lips found each others again. 

And when it was time for work they would flirt glances at each other all day long, laughing because Charlie and Dee wouldn’t suspect a thing, they couldn’t, not when they hid it so well. In the back office Mac would kiss him; it was honeyed and sweet, laced with a little bit of desperation. Dennis would hold him to the door and smile into his mouth, kissing him deeply. Nobody had to know that Charlie could hear them through the walls, that somebody knew exactly what they were doing. Nobody had to know. 

“I wish we could stay like this forever,” Mac lamented one afternoon lying next to Dennis in his bed, resting his hand on his cheek as he watched him chain smoke through the open window beside them. Dennis punched him in the shoulder and Mac winced, shoving him in retaliation. “Ow what the fuck was that for dude?” he cried, rubbing his shoulder.

Dennis rolled his eyes and flicked his cigarette, “Don’t say shit like that. That’s so fucking stupid.” 

Mac frowned, Dennis’ words leaving his ego a little bruised. He rolled over onto his back and crossed his arms, hearing Dennis scoff at him while he snubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on the nightstand. Dennis laughed at him, moving over to Mac as slow as he could, taking in the sight of Mac all wound up and mad. He pressed a kiss to his shoulder and then to his neck and cheek. Mac shooed him away but felt a smile creep up to his lips.

“You forgive me?” Dennis asked, looking up at him with his chin rested on Mac’s shoulder He looked so earnest, Mac felt his heart twist a little in his chest. And even though he was joking, even though to Dennis this was all a game, Mac felt every moment of this in his bones. He took it all to heart. 

“Yeah,” Mac grumbled. “Course I do.” He pressed a kiss to Dennis’ forehead and pulled himself up from the bed, finding his pants from earlier and pulling them back on. He left Dennis alone in the bed, felt him watch as he walked out the door. Mac found himself unable to catch his breath. Dennis let him leave and Mac found himself panting in the hallway outside the door of the apartment, stumbling outside to breathe some air back into his lungs. He was so filled with affection for his friend who probably didn’t see this as anything more than a quick fuck and a good lay, and oh God was Mac spiraling. 

Dennis pulled himself out of bed. Lying there with Mac, he’d felt something underwhelming settle through his body. For once it was welcoming, to feel nothing but pitfalls of calm swelling up behind his eyes. But when Mac left there was this spike of panic juxtaposed to the calm that had begun to wax and wane. There was an easiness that Mac brought with him, a kind of goodness that made Dennis feel alright for the moments he was around. He didn’t like feeling this way; he liked having sex with people whose faces he couldn't see, he liked kicking them out before the sun even had a chance to rise. He wasn’t used to hands pushing back his messy bed head to kiss him. He wasn’t used to somebody seeing him naked, completely bare to the bone, and still want to be with him the next day.

Dennis knew very well that Mac loved him. He’d said it before when they were sweating in the face of certain death, a kind of death that turned out to be made of rubber, but still. Dennis was so used to people wanting him because he’s young and fun, because he could be easily manipulated at one point in time. He was so used to being loved in that way, and usually when he found himself alone after he would hurt and hurt and hurt but God, if it wasn’t worth the pain of being adored (it wasn’t). 

Dennis could let himself be loved but he would never love back because that meant being open and seen in a way he wasn’t used to. He wasn’t used to having someone rummage around in his insides to see all the broken twisted things in there. But there with Mac, presented with this thing that felt something like real true love, he wanted to sink his teeth in. He didn’t want to be so afraid of the bite.


	6. Bite The Hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mac and Dennis break up :( again? I dunno man

“It goes like this,” Charlie said, rolling his sleeves up to his elbows as he scattered markers across the bar. He drew long lines in directions Dennis could not discern. He cocked his head to the side and squinted, trying to make something of the senseless shapes put onto the paper. “See there’s me—” he says, and Dennis nods like he sees the resemblance— “and that’s my window right outside the alley.” He drew red lines coming from the window. “The sound comes barreling in from where all those cats are man.”

“Uh huh,”

“I need like a—like a sound proof board or something.” He’s rambling, Dennis hardly pays attention.

“Why did you need to draw it out?” 

“Cos dude, I feel like you’re not getting the full scope of how bad it is. It’s like, driving me insane all night long.”

Dennis rolls his eyes and cradles his cheek with his palm, slumping across the bar. He sighed, eyes falling towards the door that Mac swings open with all his force and vigor. He stumbles in all disheveled and up heaved. Dennis refused to think about how he had him this morning, so fragile and unaware while he slept beside him in his bed. Mac heads towards the back office without even glancing at him. Dennis smirks into his beer bottle, feeling warm at the thought of Mac playing hard to get for him. It was endearing to him for some odd reason.

Charlie leans against the wall behind him staring at the office door that shuts behind Mac. He cocks an eyebrow at Dennis who stares love struck in his friend's wake. Charlie shakes his head and goes back to his drawing abandoned beside them on the bar. 

The day is slow, the few customers scattered throughout the bar pay no mind to their squabbling. Mac and Dennis sit close enough so that they’re always touching, but neither really acknowledges the other. By midday the alcohol has begun to surge through their systems making them feel awake and alive. Dennis, who’d been slung across the counter this morning all slumped over all dead weight like a drowned body in a lake, was now chasing Charlie to his apartment, arm loads full of plywood and hammers and nails. Mac watched them leave and shook his head. 

“They’re so dumb,” he remarks to Dee who nods her head in agreement. 

“Yeah,” she laughs, drumming her fingers on the counter. She can feel the weight of hesitancy in the air, waiting for Mac to say something, anything. 

“Do you wanna go get high in the back office?” he blurts, and she nods, desperate for something to do. 

Dennis sits on Charlie’s couch, hunched over with his hands clasped in his lap as though he was attempting to make himself as small as possible. He surveys the room as Charlie struggles to nail a piece of wood to his wall by the window. His apartment was disgusting, cluttered with what could only be trash, pink and black stains climbing up the walls, the paint on them peeling off to reveal the bones of the room. Dennis shuddered, Charlie lived like an animal. 

“Why can’t you just close the window?” Denis offered.

“Because we need the air circulation at night or else Frank’s constant farting will suffocate us,” he explained, to which Dennis just shrugged, it sounded pretty reasonable. “Plus the glass isn’t like, thick enough or something, so if I just cover part of it with wood, that should absorb the sound good enough but still give us airflow.” He was rambling again, and apparently couldn’t multitask very well because he was dropping nails everywhere as he tried to talk. “Dude, this is gonna work so well,” he mumbled around a nail perched between his lips. Dennis stood up to help him in his struggle, holding the piece of wood steady to the wall so Charlie could haphazardly hammer it, just nearly missing Dennis’ fingers with each swing.

“Jesus Charlie, watch out that’s my hand—” Charlie cut him off with the strike of his hammer to Dennis’ pointer finger. 

There was a moment of stillness before a flash of pain surged through the appendage. Dennis dropped the wood and held his finger to his chest, hissing through his clenched jaw. “God dammit,” he cried, turning away from Charlie who was scrambling to help.

“I’m so sorry dude I didn’t even see your hand.”

“Really?” Dennis whined, “You couldn’t see my hand that I told you was right fucking there?” 

Charlie said nothing, just let him clutch his finger tightly as if to squeeze out the pain while shades of red began fading to purple. An anger like fire burned green and blue through him as he reached the crux of whatever goodness he’d found earlier that day, while Charlie just stood there as a helpless witness to his sharp decent. He shook Charlie off of him when he moved to help, clenching his jaw as he desperately tried to keep himself calm, using every ounce of energy trying not to take it out on his friend. Dennis knew he didn’t mean to, but he really wanted to take that hammer and come down on Charlie’s own hands that were still reaching for his shoulder. 

“I’m going back to the bar,” he mumbled through the blinding pain and rage. 

In the back office, Mac and Dee dug through the ceiling to find Charlie’s stash of inhalants, finding a plethora of things to burn their brain cells with. Mac was swinging high with ecstasy, face tilted to the open ceiling listening to Dee inhale sharp and quick. Her laugh sounded all pitched and distorted, told her she sounded like a cartoon character.

“Yeah well—” she put her nose to the paint can and breathed— “Your face is all fucked up. You look like uh—a uh— your face looks like a oil spill.”

Mac leaned back in the chair behind the desk and mumbled something indiscernible to the both of them. They were flying high, the neurons in their brains charged up, short circuiting their systems so the whole room felt like it was under water. Mac took another breath of air before submerging himself completely. 

Their serenity was interrupted by the harsh slam of the door —of Dennis billowing in like smoke or a storm, like the fury of a thousand winds, maybe.

“Dennis?” Mac stumbles out, eyes circling the room in a blurry haze trying to find him. His disoriented state caused him to waver a bit, clutching the sides of the doorframe to steady himself. 

Dennis lurches behind the bar and digs out some ice, wrapping it in a dishrag and pressing it to his swollen finger. Charlie hurries in after him apologizing at his heels. 

“Dude I swear I didn’t mean to I—”

“Charlie please shut the fuck up,” Dennis grits out, teeth clenched trying to sustain his anger, trying to suppress this suddenly uncontrollable heat that was grazing the insides of his mouth. 

Charlie tried to say something but before the apology could come out Dennis had turned around with his teeth bared and snarling, “Leave me the fuck alone.” This time it wasn’t soft or subdued, it was real and red and hot, punctuated with the slam of his good fist on the counter. Charlie is taken aback, jumps a little bit with the sudden noise. Dennis’ chest is heaving, he is without any breathe in his lungs and suddenly he has to stop tears from welling up in his eyes.

There’s a hand on his shoulder grounding him with tenderness and grace, the same kind of goodness he reserved for Charlie, the type of sweetness that made Dennis feel as though he could come apart at the seams from all the warmth and love. But Dennis doesn’t want that right now, he wants to barely hold himself together, to be perfect in place and silent and still all on his own. He couldn’t stomach Mac touching him like that in front of everyone so he shoves him off. Charlie and Dee watch with wide eyes, they watch Mac mold himself into whatever Dennis needed him to be; a punching bag, somebody to throw cruel insults to like a wall, or a cold sheet of ice to throw his fists against while they swelled with pressure and blood. 

“Get the fuck away from me Mac. All of you just get away from me.” He cowers by the bar, his hunched over spine heaving with each shallow breath.

“What happened?” Mac asked him, calmly and quietly, a sudden sobriety falling over his once intoxicated head. “You seemed okay earlier, what happened to that? Den please—”

Dee doesn’t think she’s ever seen Mac so pliant and easy before, so willing and so at the mercy of somebody who couldn’t be farther from God. Her heart is in her throat, any reactions now stunted by the chemicals still coursing through her brain. She saw her brothers face twist and contort in all sorts of horrifying ways, sees his skin glow red like evil rising from the depths of hell. She wonders how Mac could ever see anything holy simmering away in that rotten skull of his. 

Dennis looks at everyone staring at him, the few customers still in the bar have their eyes turned on him like blinkers or headlights and he is there like potential roadkill standing right in their way. Suddenly he feels nothing but caustic shame rolling over him, humiliation blankets his ears and muffled all the noise in the bar. His cheeks burn as he stands there with his finger clutched to his chest. Mac is mumbling something to him that sounds like he’s underwater and everything starts to feel like just a little too much. 

Dennis says nothing as he walks out, leaving an air of tension settling into the cracks of the room. He curls into himself in the bed that night, folds himself into the sheets and just cries all choked up and staccato. He was so cold and deathly afraid of whoever he’d become back at the bar, so he took that fear and weaponized it. He wrapped it around the insides of his wrists and around the pulse of his neck, pulled it up around all of the most delicate parts of his body and let it settle somewhere in his chest like sediment at the bottom of the ocean. 

 

-

 

“Do you like men?” Charlie asked, shifting upright in his chair. It wobbled a little like it had a bad leg or something.

“What?” Dee sputtered, clasping her hands to her lips so she didn’t spit out her water. “What are you talking about,” she exclaimed in a hushed whisper, like it would be an offense for anyone to hear. The low hum of the restaurant filled her ears; it was all the side conversations and the distant clatter of silverware. Nobody took notice.

“I was just wondering cos, it seems like you don’t really, enjoy their presence or whatever.”

“Charlie I—” She glanced around to really make sure nobody was listening, paranoid of some secret that nobody but herself even knew about. When the coast was clear she scoffed at him, dismissing his claims with the wave of her hand, “That’s just how women are with men. We act really mean to them and distant, never have sex with them or even look at them, and then one day it’s just like, one day we get bored and have sex with them, and they never talk to you again.”

“Why wouldn’t you keep hooking up with them then?”

Dee scrunches up her face and laughs like that was the dumbest question he’s ever asked, “Well I mean, once the sex is over they don’t want you anymore, I can tell you that much. It’s like the mystery or whatever is gone.” It was a little sad and pathetic, hearing herself say it out loud. 

“But what do you get out of it, is it like approval or—”

“What do you mean what do I get out of it? Yes I mean, I get approval sure, but I also get laid. And I enjoy it, as a heterosexual women.” She said it so matter of factly Charlie found it, incredibly hard to believe. Not the part about chasing men and then immediately dropping them after they have sex. She had a pattern of doing that. It was the thought they she enjoyed the sex in general that threw Charlie. 

“Well if you like it so much then why do you stop talking to them right after—”

“You know, Charlie why can’t we just enjoy our meal? Okay I don’t wanna talk about my sex life with you right in front of my salad.”

“Okay, okay fine whatever,” he grumbled.

Dee took him out for lunch due to the fact that back at the bar Mac and Dennis were tearing each others throats out. Dennis had been high strung for weeks, that eerie calm that Dee had witnessed a few months ago has morphed into something unrecognizable. Dee swore she saw her brother’s eyes turn red the other night. He was impulsive, marrying Maureen Ponderosa and trapping himself into a marriage based on a high school crush. And sure she had no room to judge, sleeping with Bill on that same basis, but she could sleep at night because at least she wasn’t forced to collect his debt. 

“Do you think they’re gonna be alright?” Charlie asked through a mouthful of pasta. He looked like a child afraid of their parents impending divorce. 

Dee found herself not knowing how to answer that. Mac and Dennis had always felt like a given, just as it was a given that her and Dennis were twins. It was clear they loved each other, Dee saw it when Mac cradled his shoulder and the back of his neck just a few weeks ago. How he’d held him with such tenderness at an arm's length away just how Dennis probably wanted it.

“I don’t know. Probably. Mac is so annoying I can’t really blame Dennis for exploding, but they’re always gonna be up each others asses I think.”

Charlie nods his head, though he still worried, feared it might be something deeper. Dennis got married and even though that seemed to be a non-issue for everyone else, Charlie took it as an act of desperation. He’d never say it to Dennis’ face but he was desperate to prove himself all the time and it showed in most things he did; in his relationships and the way he interacted with them. He saw the image Dennis wanted to project and Charlie was more than happy to enable him, to not get involved or try and intervene, but that’s Dennis’ problem he supposed. 

Dennis screamed with fire and furry, like shocks of ice hurled towards Mac’s open bleeding chest.

“You’re such a fucking asshole Dennis,” Mac remarked, keeping himself calm against the others tumultuous currents, crossing his arms and looking to the floor all stoically. “All of this ‘cause I’m not gonna fold and bend to how you want me to, just this once, you can’t handle that.” 

“That’s not—”

“Yes it is! That’s exactly what the problem is.” 

Mac is not brightest. He’s more inclined to be soft and malleable despite the hard exterior he tries to front. But a few weeks ago after Dennis had his meltdown he got to talking with Charlie. He talked about how Dennis manipulates people and how he’s got Mac wrapped around his bruised finger by a string. Mac didn’t want to believe this, he wanted to deny it as he so often prone to doing. But he couldn’t help but see it in the way Dennis talked to him later that night, how he said he wanted Mac and it could just be for themselves and nobody else. He manipulated Mac’s fears, tugged on the war waging inside his body whenever he told him God couldn’t see what did not happen in the light, that it wasn’t sinful if nobody knew. And normally that might’ve worked on Mac, but not now, not when he can see the dark ungodliness residing within Dennis’ corrupted soul. Mac couldn’t go back after he’d seen all that sin naked and exposed with the break of day light. 

“You can’t stand that I’m not your toy, that I have a brain Dennis. All that sin fucked you up, all the way down deep man.” 

“Oh that’s fucking rich,” he sneered. Dennis didn’t give a shit about religion, he didn’t let a vacant entity dictate who he did and didn’t fuck, he sure as hell wasn’t about to let Mac try and guilt him with it. “You’re the stupidest mother fucker I know, Mac,” he said. “I wouldn’t manipulate you ‘cos that’d be too easy.”

“I’m not gonna get dragged down into your lifestyle Dennis, you’re sick.”

Dennis laughed maniacally, he felt crazy, like was really and truly going insane. “You’re one to talk! Fuck Mac, you were there too.”

“Dennis—” Mac glared at him like a warning, like he was begging not to say it and daring him to all at once. “Don’t do this.”

Dennis leaned in closer to him like he really wanted him to hear it. “I didn’t hear you saying Hail fucking Mary’s when you were sucking my dick, Mac. I didn’t hear you calling it sin when you were fucking me into the mattress, or when you begging me to let you—”

“Fuck you,” Mac spit violent and sharp.

That broke something in Dennis, made him so irrevocably angry. He was so tired of Mac denying denying denying all the time. He surged towards him, feeling all that anger and rage and hatred hurling towards Mac’s face in the shape of his fists, his hook cracking against the sides of Mac’s skull and pummeling his eye so hard he’s afraid he might’ve knocked him unconscious. But he couldn’t stop himself, he was so angry and fed up he couldn’t even straight. 

Mac is knocked back a little but regains his balance, ready to throw a punch in retaliation, but it wasn’t as easy as Dennis had made it out to be. He swung his hand to the side and missed, pathetically. He could hear Dennis laughing and his blood ran hot.

“See what I mean?” Dennis laughed, “You’re too fucking easy Mac. Why would I ever waste my time with you.”

And perhaps Mac is just particularly sensitive lately, or maybe he’s always been this soft, but something about the way Dennis spits this out with no hesitation or remorse, something about how easy it is for him to say, makes Mac collapse against the bar, his chest heaving with all that anger and sadness inside of him. 

“Why are you doing this to me?” he asks, voice catching a little on a sob, it’s just the frailest little hiccup but Dennis can hear it.   
He looks at Mac, at this man who has loved him and loved him without ever being asked to. The only person he never had to make stay. Dennis had hurt him, he had punched him and screamed and yelled horrible awful things that Mac probably has only ever heard in his nightmares. But there was Dennis, manipulating these insecurities and preying on them, twisting them into steel and weaponry. It was as though he wanted Mac to leave, as though he wanted Mac to scream at him and tell him he hated him because that way all of this could be over without ever having to face any hard truths. Maybe he was a masochist for wanting Mac to punch him or call him a bitch, but at least that was something he could understand. 

“What do you want from me,” Mac asks one last time, defeat rising with his calming breath. 

Dennis wished Mac had just punched him back. “Shit Mac I—” It was far to late for apologies, Dennis could see that. He hated seeing him just give in like this. He hated seeing him wipe his nose with his arm, see him turn away while he blinked back tears.

“Whatever Dennis,” he said quietly, broken and worn. He leaves him standing there in the bar, alone once again.


	7. Its All Peaches and Cream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> how mac and dennis got closer in high school might've had something to do with pcp, a drug run gone wrong, and a car chase.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first of all i am so sorry for not updating Ive been so busy with school, but now i'm on break and i'll be posting a lot more regularly. thank u all for reading and being patient with me ! i love this chapter a lot high school macden has a special place in my heart :)
> 
> tw: drug use, homophobic slurs, minor violence (non graphic) and semi-sexual content (implied/non graphic)

This class was far too long; the professor with his stupid cardigans and his stupid glasses that magnified everything that the lens caught, like a curious child holding up a magnifying glass to the ants crawling through the grass. It blew up the equations scrawled across the board to a comical size and Dee snickered to herself as she rolled her pencil back and forth between her painted fingers, picking at the red polish that began to chip by her cuticles. 

She watched the clock from the corner of her eye; the time dragged by so slowly, moving like how it does underwater with little to no motion. Dee was blowing bubbles up towards the break in the surface with her gum, her legs crossed and bouncing anxiously. She tried to glance inconspicuously behind her, eyes straining with the attempt. Her brace creaked with the movement; it would be one more week until she got it taken off.

The bell rang, the shrill alarm drowning out the professor who sighed, unable to make a class full of bored and anxious seniors stay long enough for him to finish his sentence. Dee slung her bag over her shoulder as she began pushing and shoving her way through the crowd.

“Move,” she grumbled. “Fuck, get out of my way.” She stumbled out of the sea of arms and shoulders, marching down the hall towards the back entrance leading out to a smoking area that had been closed off due to the recent ban. She looked behind her to make sure she wasn’t being followed, hiding her face a bit behind her hair that fell in little curls from the braids she had in this morning.

She’d been told by a certain someone once that the curls were cute —or something like that. That certain someone said that she liked the way they fell across her shoulders in small waves, that she liked the way they felt between her fingers when they kissed.

The second Dee fell against the wall —her attention momentarily focused on biting along the edge of her chipping nail polish— she felt hands on her shoulders. Her eyes widened as her gasp was suppressed by cherry pink lips. She softened when she saw who it was, sighing into her and Dee wrapped her hands around her hips, pulling her in closer. 

“Shit, you scared me,” Dee laughed a little breathlessly.

“Yeah well, I know you didn’t want me to follow you,” the girl said against her ear, kissing along her neck a little bit desperately and a little bit relentlessly. “So I came around the front entrance.”

“Yeah you did,” Dee muttered, her eyes going back in her head a little bit. The girl cocked her eyebrow a little innuendo.

“What does that mean—” she began but Dee cut her off by flipping them, pushing her up against the wall so her brace wasn’t digging into her spine anymore. 

“Just shut up,” she said, kissing her deep and with passion. 

Dee heard the bell ring and as quickly as she came she was gone twice as fast, leaving the girl panting and alone, hair tousled and cheeks flush from being in her grip. She watched Dee dispeare through the double doors, the harsh slam of the metal and the click of the gears ringing in her wake. The girl smoothed down her appearance and collected herself, knowing that these quick and fleeting moments were for the best. That it was okay that Dee acted like she didn’t know her most of the time, that she pretended that she didn’t remember the feel of her lips along her neck or her hands around her waist. She could survive on stealing glances at the back of her head in trigonometry class, on brushing against her hand in the halls whenever they happened to cross paths; because it was worth it to have moments like these. 

Dee was a wild and feral girl, she was angry and mean most of the time, but God if the girl didn’t find herself falling in love her. She was falling for the way she would try not to stare at her during class, for the way she would holler and scream, sometimes throwing fits. Dee was so beautiful in a mischievous, delinquent, and scheming type of way, but more and more everyday she was falling for all of it. When she saw her following her brother around, sitting with him and the two other kids who looked like they were born in the gutter; she longed to be with them. She would sometimes watch them from afar and duck behind cars in the parking lot while she watched big smoke clouds plume from the faucet of Deandra’s lips. She watched them ignore each other and fight and laugh, and she wanted so desperately to be seen by them sometimes. She wanted Dee to come over and introduce her or make fun of her or something, anything to let her know she existed outside of that secret wall behind the school. 

While Dee was rushing back inside the building, Dennis was keeping himself discrete in the hallways, slinking along the walls and ducking and diving behind other people's shadows. He ran his shaky hands through his hair, tucking the curls behind his ear with the clamyness of his palms. 

He needed something to trip off of, needed something just to get through the day. He was jonesing for a hit or a huff or a bump, something, anything to calm the swell of whatever nervousness or anxiety that was leaving a bad taste in his dry mouth. He needed his dealer, needed to find him because that kid always had something for him. It didn’t matter that most of the time Dennis felt like he was too good to hang around that street rat because nothing about his image mattered right now, not when the reflection of it in the mirror was all fuzzy and going static around the edges. 

“Fuck, where is that kid?” he cursed beneath his breath, stepping out from behind someone and escaping the halls through a fire exit. He couldn’t be caught skipping class again, couldn’t risk seeming like a burn out to all his friends. 

Before he had a chance to curse the kid out again, his arms were full of bag and zippers. Mac was there in front of him for a second and gone in a blur the next as he dumped the duffle bag in Dennis’ arms. Dennis stared down at it and furrowed his brow, running after Mac and pinning him against the brick wall before he could turn the corner and get away. His hair was all loose and flying up around his face, cheeks flush and winded with the chase. There was a thought that flashed through Dennis’ mind, one that was quick and hushed and said Mac looked kind of sweet framed beneath him like that.

Dennis pushed the bag back into Mac’s chest with force. “What is this shit? You tryin’ to get me arrested fuckhead?” he whispered with harshness and bite. 

Mac craned his neck to peer out behind Dennis’ shoulder, making sure nobody was coming. He returned his gaze to Dennis and pushed the bag back into arms, squirming out of his grip. “No just—take that to your car please. I’ll meet you there in a bit I just can’t have it right now,” Mac said as he ran off, turning back for a moment to look at Dennis with pleading eyes. Mac cocked his head to the side to look around him again, panicking when he hears shouts. “Please?” he mouthed, clasping his hands to his chest in a sort of prayer as he began backing away. 

“Fine, whatever,” Dennis grumbled, slinging the bag behind his back and watching the kid take off around the corner as three guys appeared a few feet behind them stalking his trail. Dennis watched them round the corner, he swallowed a little surge of panic that began to rise in his throat. I better get free weed for a year for this shit, he thought as he took off towards his car in the back lot. 

He kept his head down, his eyes cast down towards the cracks in the pavement trying to avoid any teachers or suspicious students. He had no idea what was in the bag, but he knew it couldn’t be good if the guy had practically begged him to take it. 

Dennis wiped his nose with his thumb and sniffs a little, remembering the itch and the urge that raced across his skin in little electric currents earlier. He threw the bag down in the passenger seat of his car and climbed into the driver's side. He stared down at the bag for a moment and never really considered not going through it. He felt a little entitled to whatever was in there, if he was being honest.

He opened it up and dug around the giant textbooks stacked up in there. He groaned, no way he was carrying around textbooks, that kid was dumb as rocks there was no chance he was going home and studying. Dennis opened one up of the books and found that the pages had been carved out. There were little plastic baggies tucked inside like diamonds encased in stone. Dennis smirked, taking one of them and smoothing out the wrinkles in the plastic with his fingers, letting the joint in there catch the light that fell through the window onto his lap. It was a pretty little thing, the green inside wrapped up like a present. He lifted his hips as he dug through his pockets for a lighter, cracking the wheel until there were sparks flying across his thumb. The flame caught the end the joint as he held it to his lips, furrowing his brow while he breathed in long and deep, closing his eyes waiting for that smoke to suffocate all that pain and worry flicking its barbed tongues up at his throat. 

Dennis’ mouth fell open as the smoke drooled from his lips. He hung there for a moment with the paper burning in his stilled grip, staring vacantly out the window at the parking lot as he felt his body begin to droop like a junky nodding in the back of his car. The smoke curling in the bottom of his stomach rose up on its haunches as he coughed hard on the exhale. It burned all the way back up his throat even after he’d cooled it with his breath and tongue. The hit blew his pupils out wide open, the second the drug touched his sistem the black holes swallowed up the whites of his corneas. His head hit the back on the seat, the high so intense it stole all the breath from him. 

“Fuck,” he whispered, his eyes rolling around his skull. This didn’t feel like weed. This was some powerful shit — some kind of knock you off your ass might even kill you type of shit. He took another hit and it burned a little less this time. 

The sound of knuckles frantically rapping against his skull woke him up. He couldn’t be sure how long he’d been sitting here, maybe minutes, maybe hours, maybe days even. He didn’t know, wasn’t really sure if he cared. He rubbed his eyes and sat up, his head swimming in something toxic and current. He grinned at Mac lazily with eyes so hooded he could hardly see out of them. Mac was gesturing for Dennis to unlock the doors with that same anxious energy he had before, looking all around them to check for bodies with weapons that were chasing him down. Dennis wasn’t fully sure those men were real right now.

“Sup man,” Dennis slurred, rolling down the window and leaning out at him. He looked at Mac with a goofy smile, his face and chest all warm from staring at this frantic boy in front of him, feeling his heart beat so slowly in his chest he might die. 

Mac stepped out of his space, waving his hand out in front of him to clear the smoke that had plumed out in huge mushroom clouds from the cab of Dennis’ car. Mac stepped back to have a good long look at Dennis, eyes going wide when he smelled it. “What did you do man, fuck,” Mac said sharply as he coughed through his secondhand smoke, panic striking each of his syllables. He shook his head in his hands, looking back at the building where those men were talking to a group of people that pointed towards Dennis’ car. “Fuck, I do not have time for this shit. Move, let me in.” He opened the door and pulled Dennis out of the driver's seat.

“Hey man you can’t—” Dennis shook his head trying to keep his words straight, like his thoughts were all melded together and he had to break them loose— “That’s my fucking car man, don’t take it.”

Mac jumped out and grabbed Dennis by the arm, ignoring his protests as he shoved him into the passenger seat. “I don’t have time for this,” Mac grumbled again as he threw himself back in the driver’s seat, fingers shaking around the key as he turned it over, peeling out of the parking lot in a cloud of dust and smoke from Dennis’ high. 

“Why don’t you ever give me the good shit man,” Dennis slurred. “Cause I’m fucking— hmm. I’m rolling hard.” 

“That’s PCP dude,” Mac said, looking over at him to make sure he wasn’t dosing right there in the passenger seat. 

“Huh?” he asked, leaning in close to Mac who kept his eyes hard on the road ahead. 

Mac gripped the steering wheel tight and clenched his jaw, “That’s not weed, you’re getting fucked up on angel dust man.” 

“You let me smoke PCP?” Dennis shrieked, pulling on his seat belt like he was trying to escape the sudden severity of the high. Mac shot another nervous glance his way, checking in the rearview mirror as he did so. “You drugged me!” Dennis shouted. “Oh my God you drugged me you did—”

 

“No I did not! I didn’t even know you were gonna fuckin’ smoke it. Fuck—” Mac swerved around a car that had slowed down to make a turn, going too fast to slam on the breaks. Dennis gripped the handle bar and braced himself until they were on the right side of the road again.

“Fuck do you even know how to drive, Jesus Christ,” Dennis roared, eyes blown in a full on panic now. 

“Not really,” Mac admitted, eyes sacading from the mirrors to the road. He slowed down when he was sure there was no sign of the men who were chasing him earlier. “Fuck,” he said with little relief, slamming his fists on the steering wheel. 

“God dammit you fuckin suck,” Dennis groaned. “Why did you let me smoke PCP you fucking asshole—” Dennis cursed him out and sunk further into his seat, his head lolling back into the headrest with his brain feeling swollen and full, all ready to burst in a plume of color and light. The traffic lights they were blowing through began swinging back and forth in his vision, looking like they were going to come right off the wire. 

“I didn’t let you do shit!” Mac cried. “You shouldn’t be stealing people’s drugs!”

Dennis scoffed and blinked away the long shadowed fingers pulling at his eyelids. He crossed his arms over his chest, “Who the fuck laces weed with PCP? Who does that shit.”

“I was in a tight spot okay dude? I’m a little in over my head here—” he slammed on the gas trying to make a quickly changing light but ended up running straight through the reds anyway. Dennis gripped his seatbelt a little harder, tensed himself up a little tighter. Mac continued, “I needed something stronger so I could sell more and—and now I’ve got three dudes who are very pissed off with me just ‘cos I cornered the market. Like big deal, so what? They got caught, it’s not my fault they can’t be more secretive.”

“It literally is your fault though—” Dennis said, trying not to bash his head on the ceiling and crack his teeth when Mac drove straight through a pothole— “You literally ratted them out.”

Mac scoffed, “Well whatever! Okay, let’s not—let’s not get caught up in the logistics of it. I owed them a shit ton of money and so I figured why not try and get out of it, right? Well turns out that was not such a good idea, ‘cos now they want the money and they want me dead. So I had to sell something a little stronger than weed so I could pay ‘em back and then some. And now you’ve gone and smoked up all my stash—” 

“They just looked like joints how the fuck was I supposed to know you laced them?” Dennis was going delirious. His head began nodding back and forth, rolling along his spine as colors and lights flitted behind his eyelids. He saw a flock of birds cover the sky, their wings folding around the sun and turning everything black. 

“Shit man,” Mac said as he quickly glanced over at his eyes going back into his head. “How much of that did you smoke?”

“Too much I think.” 

He’d never done anything like this before, his body wasn’t used to something this strong. Mac’s brow furrowed as he stared back at the road, pulling a hand through his hair as he exhaled heavily. Dennis liked the way he looked in his car, looked like he really belonged there. The chemicals grazing along the sides of his skull made it so much easier to look at Mac and not feel gross or wrong or weird. He’d thought things like this maybe once or twice before; when Mac slipped him some weed and his hands slid into Dennis’ coat pocket. Dennis was fully capable of putting it in there himself, but he liked the warm slide of Mac’s hand as it just barely grazed his hips. Sometimes when it was late at night and Dennis was all alone in his room, when he wasn’t all that lucid or all that sober, he would slide his hands in his own pants and replicate that warmth rolling over him in sweet shocks. He would take the joint Mac had given him earlier, place it right between his lips and arch his back, his eyes rolling back into his skull with just the thought of him.

Mac parked a little ways from Dennis’ driveway, when he saw they’d arrived home he shot up in the passenger seat, his muscles all tensed and strained from corroding into the back of the seat. “No, no, no, no—” Dennis mumbled, his hands pressing against the window while he watched snowflakes swirl around in the condensation from his breath against the glass, unable to determine whether they were real or fake despite the heat of summer slowly approaching. “We can’t be here dude, my mom has people over. I can’t be home like this fuck.”

Mac was already climbing out of the driver's seat and walking towards his door on the other side, pulling him out and throwing an arm around his hip to help him inside. “Where do you wanna go then?” Mac asked him. “Back to my house where you can tweak out in my room while I get blasted full of holes?”

Dennis looked at him at a loss with his mouth hung open like a fish gasping for air. Mac shrugged a little, mouthing a short yeah as he hoisted Dennis a little more upright, throwing his arms around his own shoulders. Dennis grabbed at the fabric of Mac’s shirt a little too tightly like he was seeing something that made him fear for his life. They stumbled over to the back of the house where Mac could see windows on the second floor. He looked up at one and eyed an ivy wound wall of fence that was propped up below a balcony built beneath it.

“I can’t climb that dude,” Dennis said, shaking his head with his chin tucked against his chest. 

Mac rolled his eyes, “Yeah no shit.” 

“What do you wanna do then? Just walk right through the front door?” Dennis slurred, nodding his head towards that direction. Mac eyed it like he was giving it a serious consideration. “What? Dude no c’mon my mom and all her little friends are in there—”

“Yeah so? They’re all housewives right? They’re gonna be pilled out anyway,” he huffed, out of breath from keeping Dennis upright. 

Dennis didn’t say anything, his mouth hung open again like he wanted to protest but he had nothing to say, perhaps he’d made some points. “Yeah,” Dennis said as he shook his head. “Yeah, I guess.”

He let Mac drag him out onto the front lawn, the movement was so fast and sudden Dennis felt his whole stomach lurch, felt a queasiness breach his lips. “Mac,” he pleaded quietly, clutching his stomach. This caught Mac’s attention because it might’ve been the first time Dennis had actually said his name in all these years of knowing him. They were on a no name basis, Mac was his dealer who sometimes touched him a little too much when he handed him the product, taking a little vision for himself while Dennis handed him the cash and walked off without so much as a goodbye. He’d never admit to being a friend or an acquaintance, he assumed that in Dennis’ eyes, Mac was just somebody bought drugs from and occasionally smoked them with.

Dennis gagged and Mac felt his own stomach lurch at the sound. He released his grip on him so Dennis could bury his head in the bushes, throwing up until there was nothing left and he was just dry heaving. “Fuck,” he mumbled, wiping his mouth with the front of his shirt. Mac grimaced but wrapped his arms back around him, helping him through the front door. 

Mac didn’t have much time to look around but the house was like a gaping black hole that when it inevitably implodes in on itself it only vacuums up expensive things. There was a staircase wrapped around the walls, it’s elegant sloping railing unraveling like a tongue sliding along the marble floors. Everything was so white it was almost blinding, Mac had never been anywhere so clean before. As he hauled Dennis up the stairs his attention was drawn to the picture frames hanging up along the walls. Some were of Dennis young and fresh faced, looking kind of dorky and gawky if you stared at them long enough. Some were of fancy paintings where the oil was still glossy and caught the light of the chandelier in the hall upstairs.  
Mac looked down at Dennis who was leaning into him more, barely making it up that last step. Downstairs there was the dull roar of housewives clinking their wine glasses along granite countertops and the chime of their rings tapping against the fine crystal. It was quiet down there compared to the loud rush of substance coursing through Dennis’ brain and the anxiety pulsating through Mac’s chest.

“Someone’s coming,” Dennis whispered, pressing both of them against the wall with his arm. Having Dennis touch him so physically was not helping to calm him down. Mac shut his eyes tight and whispered a prayer that they didn’t get caught by his mother or some loud mouthed woman whose skin was pulled back so tight you could see her skull. “Stop breathing so loud,” Dennis whispered as he peered around the corner, listening for the sound of a medicine cabinet door closing shut. Dennis’ head quickly fell back against the wall when he heard the taunting cry of high heels clicking against the hardwood floors. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he gritted out through a clenched jaw. 

Before the woman could round the corner into the hall Dennis grabbed Mac by the edge of his torn sleeves, dragging him into a closet that sat just across from them. Mac blinked around the sudden darkness as he waited for his eyes to adjust. They stood there together holding their breaths, waiting for the shadow of the woman’s figure to cross over them while she temporarily obscured the light in the hall. Everything in Dennis’ vision was swirling and warped, the slits in the closet door looked like they were open and closing at a rapid pace.

“Shut the fuck up,” Mac whispered, his breath could be felt with intensity against Dennis’ neck. “You’re breathing so fucking loud dude shut up—”

“You’re being so much louder than my breathing could ever be, you shut the fuck up—”  
The argued over each other in hushed voices, halting when the heels stopped just outside the closet. Mac slaps his hand over Dennis’ mouth to shut him up and they both stood completely still, holding their breaths again as they pressed in close, trying to make themselves as small as possible. Mac watched the heels step closer and closer to the door, walking towards them with the haunting click of the plastic against wood. 

Dennis looked at Mac wildly and afraid, his whole body tensed beneath the hand still covering his mouth. The woman paused for a moment too long and then shouted, “Hey Barbara! I finally see what you mean about this photo!” her voice dwindled as she began to walk away, her footsteps fading as she descended the staircase. Mac slowly lowered his hand as they stood there still shaking in place, catching the rest of her conversation with Dennis’ mother downstairs, “You’re daughter, the skinny one. Her skin is atrocious, she’s already got crows feet! She could really use some of my creams they do wonders—”

Mac raised an eyebrow, watching Dennis’ frame collapse with relief as he peered out of the closet, ushering Mac back out into the hall. “Jesus that was harsh,” Mac said, catching Dennis when he stumbled again.

Dennis furrowed his brow and looked down the stairs to make sure they were clear before leading him to his bedroom. “No they have a point, her skin is horrendous.”

Mac just shrugged his shoulders as Dennis opened the door to his bedroom. It was neat inside, not really what he was expecting from a teenage boy who smokes a little too much pot. Everything was put away in drawers, his bed was made and the floor was free from clutter. The dark blue of his walls made everything feel dark and heavy, only brightened by the curtains pulled apart by the window. There was something eerie about it, something unsettling that made Mac realize he was practically in a strangers bedroom. Though he’d known Dennis for years, he kept himself at a distance. Dennis was somebody he liked to watch from afar, he was a familiar face he could jerk off to and not feel guilty about because he’d just happened to cross his mind. A stranger in the crowd didn’t mean anything; it could be chalked up to coincidence when Mac didn’t know what the inside of his house looked like or what color his bedroom walls were. 

He was a stranger really, and suddenly everything was so suddenly real jarring. Mac was hyper aware of the fact that it was potentially a dangerous situation too. What if Dennis kidnapped him, or tied him up and tortured him? What if he slid a knife down his throat just the see what it would feel like to sink it into something soft and fleshy. 

“For reference,” Dennis said —taking Mac out of the horrific visions of sadism— throwing himself down on his bed and pointing over to the window next to it. “That window is mine, if you ever need to scale the fuckin’ wall or whatever.”

 

Mac had no idea why he would ever need to know that, but he didn’t take much of what he was saying to heart right now, as he could practically see the pink matter swishing around in his skull. Mac worried for a moment that it might drain out of his ears and onto his pristine bed sheets. 

Dennis sat up and pulled his hands down his face, sniffing and the grimacing. “My shirt smells like puke,” he mumbled, weakly pulling at the spot where he wiped his mouth earlier. 

Dennis began to take his shirt off and Mac’s eyes widened as he quickly averted them to the floor, missing him pull it up over his head and get it caught up around his ears. Dennis fumbled out of it like he had to pull himself up by the torso to get it off, tossing it to the floor beside his closet and sitting back down on the edge of the bed with his hands between his knees. His head bobbed up and down as he let his eyes close for a moment, sighing softly to himself.

There was a sudden stillness in the wake of the events following this afternoon. The rush of adrenaline from before had left their bodies that now slumped over a little with exhaustion. 

“You doing alright?” Mac asked in reference to the harsh drug still floating around his system.

Dennis shrugged. “I’m seeing’ shit, like on the walls and stuff. ‘S weird, kinda feels like I’m losing it.” 

“Yeah I—” Mac rubbed the back of his head and looked at his shoes on the floor. He felt so dirty and so out of place here, like everything he touched he covered in a layer of mud and dirt. “I’m sorry about today man. I know you didn’t wanna get wrapped up in any of this—”

“No shit,” Dennis said, looking up at Mac who was still staring down abashedly at the floor. Dennis scoffed a little, looking out towards the window and rubbing his nose with the pad of his thumb, deciding if he should say something to try and make him feel better, to maybe pity him a little. “But uh, yeah it’s finem,” he decides. “I didn’t wanna sit around at that shitty school all day anyways so.” He made it sound like it was his idea, like nobody was at fault.

Mac cracked a smile and nodded, feeling a little awkward but no longer guilty. “Yeah,” he sighed, his hands falling down to his thighs as he shoved them in his pockets, rocking back and forth while he tried his best to avert his eyes from Dennis’ bare chest. It wasn’t that it was too lewd or anything, it was just a guy with his shirt off, it wasn’t anything explicit. But for some reason he had to clench his fist in his pocket a little just to keep himself calm while his stomach dipped low. He didn’t know why, it just felt like something he wasn’t supposed to look directly at, for privacy sake of course. “Uh dude do you wanna like, put a shirt on or whatever?” he said finally, eyes darting up towards the ceiling and blushing when he heard Dennis laugh, wild and wicked. 

He was starting to come down from his high, the flickers of shadows and shapes from the hallucinations were beginning to subside so he could think and hear and see a little bit more clearly. He was coming down but he wasn’t lucid enough to push back the thrill of having a boy in his bedroom while he was shirtless; all secret and hidden from his parents downstairs. The hushed murmur of the women in his kitchen filled the tensed silence between them, he could practically see their stretched lips chattering and chattering and chattering, their lipstick staining the edges of his mother’s wine glasses. 

Dennis leaned forward on the bed, his hands stalling on his thighs. He looked up at Mac as he ran his tongue over his bottom lip like he was considering his request. He finally decided to stand up, drawing closer to Mac still smiling all cocky and rude, staying there in his space for a seconds so he could bask in the feel of Mac’s eyes lingering on his chest. Dennis was a little scrawny, his frame diminished compared to Mac who wasa little more built from living just on the fringe. Mac swallowed hard, he didn’t like whatever game Dennis was playing with him; didn’t like feeling so flushed over a boy while he was still stone cold sober. 

Dennis took his bottom lip between his teeth and nodded his head slowly in the direction of the bureau Mac was standing in front of. He was taken out of whatever trance he’d felt himself slip into moments ago and stepped out of his way, averting his eyes to the bend of Dennis’ spine while he rummaged through the drawers. He pulled on a shirt and Mac huffed with relief or tension, he doesn’t know. 

“You should stay the night,” Dennis said, speaking around a bubble of delusion that foamed from his mouth. He blinked real slow as he swayed in his place, rubbing his eyes to shake the big block letters he saw floating between them airing out his words and desires. 

“What?” Mac asked, taken aback by the question. 

“Well I mean, if you get killed tonight, that will fuckin’ suck for me since I won’t have anyone to get weed from anymore.” That was a lie. There was at least three other kids Mac could name off of the top of his head that would sell Dennis weed for a reasonable price, including Charlie who he already knew. But they kept the fallacy and didn’t say anything to dispute it. “That would really fuckin’ suck ‘cos you have good weed, even if you sometimes spike it with PCP and almost make me overdose—”

“Oh my God I did not drug you dude, stop it,” Mac argued, his brow furrowing. Dennis just laughed like he liked getting Mac all worked up. “But yeah whatever okay, I’ll stay,” he said, feigning reluctancy. 

Together they waited out the house party down stairs. Dennis crept into his sister’s room and stole them a bottle of tequila that she kept in her sock drawer. “She’s so lame,” Dennis slurred, coming down from the high but letting the sharp liquid pull him back into an upswing. “Hiding shit in your sock drawer is so elementary. She was never a very good hider.”

 

Mac just hummed from his spot on the floor across from Dennis, leaning away from the bureau he was slumped against so he could take the bottle from Dennis’ hands. Mac eyed the open flesh of Dennis’ throat as he tilted his head back against the frame of his bed that he sat against. He had his arms stretched out across the mattress looking crucified in the soft light of his room. Mac just pulled on the bottle until the image of Christ faded from mind, until Dennis was just Dennis and there was nothing heavenly or holy about him. 

Dennis laughed suddenly and manically, his chest rising and falling beneath the mismatched buttons of his flannel. Mac couldn't see his face as it was still hidden by the curve of his throat, his adam's apple bobbing up and down with the force of his laugh. 

“You’re psycho,” Mac remarked, laughing behind the lip of the bottle. Mac absently remembered his manic worrying over Dennis maybe tying him up and keeping him locked in his basement. Mac was good and drunk now, Dennis could still do that to him if he really wanted to —Mac might even let him. 

“Nah dude, no I’m not psycho. I’m just thinkin’—” he said, leaning forward and grabbing for the bottle from Mac’s hands. He takes a long drink and winces at its sharpness, wiping his lips with the back of his hand and letting the bottle settle by his feet. “You ever fuck with freshmans?” 

The question was so sudden Mac hardly had time to do anything but gape at him. “No, ew gross dude,” he said as he took the bottle from the floor and drank, needing to be a little bit drunker to have this conversation with him. Mac swallowed hard and asked a little tentatively, testing the direction of the conversation, “Why, do you?” 

Dennis shut his eyes and hummed languidly, shaking his head. “No. I mean, sure I look. But nah, not really.”

Mac nodded and rested his head back against the wood of his drawers, eyeing Dennis who didn’t shy away from the heat of his gaze. “Why you askin’ then?”

“Ah I dunno,” Dennis shrugged, looking anxiously outside the window. The alcohol wasn’t mixing right with the drugs that were still simmering through his blood in little glimmers of intoxication bordering on poison. It made the hallucinations kick up a little behind his eyes, rising and licking at the corners of them like the stroke of a fire. Dennis rested his elbows on his knees, bouncing them a little as his nerves sparked up inside himself. “I broke up with Maureen a few weeks ago, and I’m just lookin’ for somethin’ fun and unattached, you know?” He stilled the movement of his legs and looked at Mac, hard and pointedly like it was intended to be a confirmation.

Mac wasn’t sure how to take that. He just nodded his head and let the back of his skull knock up against the wood of the dresser still behind him. Downstairs the sound of the party was dwindling. The cars in the driveway began to disappear and all that could be heard was the sound of the kitchen sink and the maids cleaning up after them. 

Dennis bit his thumbnail, picking at the skin there that felt uneven. He stared out at Mac, looking at him in a way he never really had before. He saw how he was rough around his edges, sharp and refined with a little bit of shadow dotting along the curve of his jaw. He looked so pretty like that, his head tilted back with his chin jutted out just slightly, like he was feeling around the inside of his mouth for the lingering taste of liquor. Mac looked at him too; he saw Dennis who had only ever existed in his head real late at night, who was now talking to him about girls and feeling lonely, and who was giving him looks that said he wanted somebody to help him feel a little less so. 

“Maureen was fun for a while but, I’m just not sure she got me. She wasn’t really what I wanted.” Dennis talked a lot, Mac noticed. He got really chatty when he was anxious and drunk and high. “What kind of girls do you like Mac?” he asked.

Mac felt heat swing up from his cheeks to his head. He scoffed, his head rolling back as he mirrored Dennis’ posture with his hands on his knees, looking out the window like he might catch a glimpse at whatever Dennis had been hallucinating there just moments ago. Mac could barely keep his eyes open, he was so drunk he slurred every word he spoke, “I dunno man, I just like girls you know.” He sniffed a little, shifting his shoulders through the discomfort. “Nothing specific.”

“I like em’ real sweet,” Dennis said unprovoked without really responding to Mac. He hummed a little as he closed his eyes like he had a girl in mind. “That freshie, Stacy Thompson, the one who stayed back last year or whatever. Yeah she’s real sweet.”

“No way man,” Mac said laughing a little at Dennis. “I like older girls. Like, the girls who really know what they’re doing. Experience is where it's at.”

Dennis smirked and nodded at him through hooded eyes. “You like someone who knows what they’re doing,” he remarked. Mac stared at him, wanting to see what he was going to do with that information. “You know that senior Heather?” he whistled, “She’s smokin’. Probably gives amazing head. I can come around to a girl like that.” 

Mac doesn’t even really care what he’s saying anymore, he just likes the way he’s saying it, the drawl in his speech and the way he loses his breath a little. “Yeah?” Mac said, shifting his posture a little, watching Dennis’ movements carefully and letting him lead whatever this was. 

“Oh yeah bro, she probably opens her throat up all nice.” Dennis looked tightly wound, almost as much as Mac who had his hands resting on his thighs that now stretched straight out on the floor. Dennis ran his hand up to his knee that remained bent and he sighed, “You ever gotten head like that before?” he asked, and something about the question being directed toward Mac made him shudder. Dennis smirked, liked to watch the heat passing through his parted lips.

“Y—yeah. I have.”

“Yeah, ‘course you have” Dennis said squinting at him, shifting a bit so that his knee was obscuring whatever his hands were doing. “Bet you looked good doing it too, head all thrown back kinda how it is right now. She probably went real slow at first, knew exactly what she was doing. You were probably a mess, dude,” he laughed a little but it came out shaky. Mac rubbed the inside of his thighs, watching Dennis touch himself across the room like he can’t really process what’s happening. The quiet of the room was filled by the soft sighs and what would have been the beginnings of a moan from Dennis.

Dennis got up, he crept across the floor on his knees and settled in front of Mac who spread his a little to make room for him. Mac stared up at Dennis with wide eyes. He could make out some of his features in the growing dark of his room, the moonlight playing across his cheeks that were all flustered and hot, the curl of his hair all pushed back and falling in front of his eyes. He was a little breathless, a little delirious, and a little out of his mind from the drugs and alcohol. 

He didn’t reach out to touch Mac or try and say anything to him. In fact, he looked a little nervous, a little lost, and a little like he was not quite sure what to do. He was normally so put together, almost unshakable, and yet the mere thought of touching Mac had him freezing up.

He kissed him. It was soft and muted, a little unsure of itself and tentative. Dennis cradled Mac’s cheek, his fingers curving along the jaw he’d admired just moments earlier. Mac could hardly feel his lips on him as he’d gone completely numb. If he was sober right now, he might’ve pushed him off, might’ve told Dennis to get fucked. He silently thanked himself for drinking so much tonight. 

Dennis pulled away quickly and whispered, “Fuck.” Sitting back on his heels and pulling his hands away from Mac’s cheek, winding them into his own hair, completely distraught over what he’d done. Mac’s hands fell to his sides with the empty space. “I’m sorry man, I dunno what came over me. I’m just really lonely ‘cos of Maureen and I—” Mac leaned back in to kiss him if only to get him to stop talking about that stupid fucking ex-girlfriend. This kiss was deeper and more sure of itself than the first one, just how Mac needed it to be. 

Dennis fell backwards and Mac chased him as they came together against the mattress. It was hurried and messy, so quick it was almost as though it never happened. Dennis saw visions of otherworldly beings shaking their fists against the backs of his teeth when Mac kissed him. The last remnants of that chemical swirled around the outskirts of his brain and he saw something heavenly when Mac’s tongue brushed against his lips. Mac’s hands were in his pants and his Dennis’ face was buried in the crook of his shoulder lost in a frantic rapture. Mac swore he saw something akin to a white light in the give of Dennis’ body falling into place with his own. 

Mac had never kissed a boy before. He’d never really thought about doing it until now. He’d kissed girls and never really saw what was so great about it, but here with Dennis holding onto the two of them, shaking like all of their nerve endings were alight with flame and fire, he never wanted to stop.

They spent the next week or so like that, with Mac pushing him up against his bed, the walls of his house, or the stalls in the bathroom at school. They let themselves fall head first into whatever affair this was; fronting as though they were unafraid of skinned knees or bruised up faces. Dennis would brush his hands against Mac’s in the halls even when he didn’t need anything from him, just touching him because he wanted to be close to him. Mac’s heart would still in his chest as he pretended to be unafraid of what it meant to want to be near him all the time. 

Under the bleachers with Charlie and Dee, they would sit a little too closely and breathe in each others smoke like it was air. Dennis would wrap his arm around Mac’s shoulder and he would lean into the touch because he was so starved of it all the time. Charlie would look at them and think that is what happiness looked like, because none of them had really ever experienced that before, and it was a magnetic thing to witness. 

They would kiss each other in the quite secret moments and for the first time in a really long time they felt something; and though this wasn’t love it sure felt like it. Mac was petrified and Dennis ignored it as best he could. He’d never had something this good before and it scared him that maybe he didn’t deserve it, that something was bound to give sometime because people like him never got to have good things like love. But in those quiet secret moments all drunk and alone together in Dennis’ bedroom, Mac would kiss him low and breathlessly and make nothing of those fears that haunted them when they were sober.

A week or so after that night in his room, Mac had Dennis keening into his mouth. He had his hands pulling at the back of Dennis’ head while he bent his nose against his, pulling back a little so he could gasp for air or from excitement and pleasure. Mac would wrap his arms around his hips and chase him, pushing him up a little higher against the bathroom stall. They were quiet for a moment, panting as they listened for the sounds of somebody coming in to use the restroom. They were in the one all the way at the end of the west building, the one nobody ever went to because it was too inconvenient and half the toilets didn’t even work.

Dennis groaned softly as Mac pulled on his bottom lip, arching his hips into his thighs. Dennis grabbed at the collar of Mac’s shirt as he kissed Dennis from his mouth to his jaw to his neck, biting sharply on the crook of his shoulder. “No marks,” Dennis whispered hoarsely, his fists all bunched up in the fabric of his shirt still.

Dennis got bored of Mac almost sucking hickey’s into his chest so he pushed him off, wiping his mouth all wet and cherry red. Mac stepped back and smugly admired how disheveled he’d made him. Dennis nodded towards the bag on the floor, sniffing and running his hands under his nose. “Gimme the shit,” he panted, his jaw hanging open a little while he caught his breath. Mac furrowed his brow at him and tired to move back in to kiss him again, groaning when Dennis kept him at a distance by way of his hands on his chest. “C’mon man, light another one, I’m sobering up as we speak.”

It was a rule. They had to be intoxicated for Mac to touch him, for him to stomach the thought of doing this with him. Dennis rationalized it as him scoring free weed and Mac saw it as keeping a paying customer. None of that really made any sense but it allowed them to meet in middle somewhere in a the bathroom stall after school and kiss each other until they absolutely had to go home. Sometimes Mac would just go with him when things were bad at home, when spending the night in his bed was less nauseating than going back to his own.

Mac grumbled and went to rifle through his bag. He found the weed but his hands stilled when he heard movement outside. He looked up at Dennis who stared at him with wide eyes, motioning with his head for Mac to go check and make sure the coast was still clear. “Why don't you do it?” Mac mouthed, his words catching in an almost whisper. Dennis shook his head fervently and Mac huffed. The shit he would do for him. 

He peered out of the entryway, his hands wrapping around the concrete bathroom wall. He surveyed the empty hall way and sighed when he couldn’t see anybody, straightening up as he went to examine the rest of the hall to really make sure they were alone. Just as he was about to head back he felt a hand on the collar of his shirt, right in the place Dennis had bunched up beneath his fists just moments before. 

“The fuck—” he began but was cut off as he was shoved hard up against the wall, a tremendous hand coming down to cover his mouth before he could scream. He was nose to nose with one of the guys he’d screwed over a week or so ago, that were stalking him through the parking lot as he sed away in Dennis’ car.

“Looks like I caught a rat,” the guy sneered, his breath hot and rancid on Mac’s cheeks. Mac didn’t say anything but he thought the remark was a little cliche. “Where the fuck is the money, Mcdonald?” The man’s grip on his collar tightened, pulling him higher against the wall. He had a chipped tooth that Mac could see through his snarl, teeth bared to him like he wanted him to know how hard he could bite.

“I—” Mac stuttered, breath hitching around the guys ever tightening hold. “I don’t have it,” he whispered so Dennis wouldn’t hear. The guy must’ve seen him glance towards the bathroom door because he hauled Mac off outside. He threw him out the door by the collar of his shirt like a dog, the man’s fists curling by his sides with his veins fraught with rage. Mac watched with fear welling up in his throat, preparing himself for the impact.

Dennis stood there in the bathroom stall listening for a really long time. He heard Mac whispering to someone and then heard the silence that hung in the air afterwards. Something dark and mauling pitched in his stomach at the thought of something happening to Mac, so he swallowed hard and took a deep breath, moving out of the stall to go look for him.

Outside Mac’s face hit the pavement, his left eye closing against the kiss of a boot’s tongue. The man above him was hauling slurs as he shoved Mac’s face down harder into the asphalt, letting all the rocks and sharp things dig into his cheek. Mac shook against the ground, grimacing as the man spit on him, warning him if he ever thought about fucking him over ever again he’d let everyone know what he and his friend did together in the stalls after school. 

“You fuckin’ hear me punk?” the man said, teeth gritting against the clenched bone of his jaw. “I got no sympathy for guys like you. Fuckin’ disgusting.” He shoved Mac’s head down hard one last time and kicked at his ribs. “Shit’s fuckin’ perverted,” he growled, leaving Mac to shake, his bones and organs twisting themselves into a bruised up quivering mess on the pavement. 

Dennis was headed towards his car parked just a bit aways from them. He could make out something like a white streak splitting the paint of the rover from where he stood, it looked like a tear in the universe or something cosmically fatalistic like that. “Fuck,” Dennis spit as he jogged closer to it. He traced his hands over the deep scratch in his car, feeling anger well up inside him. “I’m gunna fuckin’ kill him,” he cried, face turning bright red. He turned around the see Mac limping with his hands gripping his ribs. It wasn’t until he drew nearer that he could see blood and spit drooling from his chin and all over his shirt. Dennis’ anger immediately ebbed into confusion and concern over the bloodied Mac rushing towards him. 

He reached out to touch him, to brush a hand along his cheek or his shoulder. “Shit Mac, what happened to you?” He pulled his hands away when Mac shoved past him, grimacing when his shoulder caught Dennis’ elbow.

“Got jumped,” Mac winced, limping towards the road intending on carrying himself home.

Dennis stared at him with wide eyes, not knowing what to say or how to respond to that. He settled the panic in his expression and spoke while he walked over towards Mac,“Those punk ass dude’s fucked up my car man—” he began, rolling his eyes when Mac kept moving away from him. “Hey!” he called out. Mac just ignored him, kept his eyes hard on the stretch of road ahead. His brain got cloudy as it filled itself up with pain and hurt and anger. He inhaled sharply and stopped to keel over, his hands still wrapped around his sides to keep the pain from splitting him open. “Hey, you’re not walking home like that dude, c’mon.” Dennis nodded towards his car, trying not to think about the deep rivet on the side of it. 

“I can make it,” Mac grunted, crying out through the shocks of pain coursing through his nerves when he tried to stand upright, making him double over once again. Dennis’ arm was around him, trying to pull him back to the car. Mac felt like Dennis was searing holes in his already battered body. He tried to shove him off despite the pain. “Leave me the fuck alone, don’t touch me.” He sounded pained, like he was in complete agony.

Dennis took his hands off of him and held them like he was surrendering to him. “Okay okay, Jesus. Why wont you just let me help you?”

“Because Dennis! My whole fucking world is about to get fucked up because of you! Please just leave me the fuck alone.” He made himself sharp and biting but it didn't stop Dennis from reaching out to him once more, wanting just to help him and make this go away somehow. “Don’t,” Mac warned with rage curling over in the base of his stomach. “Don’t come near me again you fuckin’ fag.” The words hurt when he said them, just as badly as when they were directed towards him.

Dennis laughed cruelly and Mac rolled his eyes and kept walking. “That’s fuckin’ rich coming from you dude. Okay whatever, call me a fag, call me whatever you want—” Dennis’ voice was distorted by the ringing in Mac’s ears, fading into the distance as Mac got further and further away. He felt his heart ache like all he wanted to do was get as far away from all of this as soon as possible and curl up in his bedsheets. He just wanted to cry and cry and cry while his organs might be bleeding out into himself.

Dennis watched Mac heave his body down the street towards his house. He sighed, exasperated and afraid, terrified that Mac might collapse and bleed out into the gutter and annoyed that he was being so God damn stubborn. Dennis raked his hands through his hair and turned back to his car. Mac watched him walk away just like he told him to —and maybe, secretly, he wanted Dennis to chase after him, to wrap his hands around his hips and carry him back to his car, buckle him in and drive him back to his house where he could pass out on the floor and Dennis could hold him because he was too broken and bruised up to push him away. But that wasn’t reality, Dennis wasn’t selfless or kind, he could be so heartless and cruel and Mac knew that. So he told him to do exactly what he did best; to just leave him alone and let him hurt. 

Dennis watched Mac from his car as he rounded the corner. He pulled out of the parking lot and followed him, keeping a distance and turning down side streets so he wouldn’t be seen. Dennis followed Mac until he got to his house, parking a ways down the street so he could still make sure he’d made it to the front door; that he didn’t pass out on his lawn and freeze to death during the night. Dennis sighed with relief as he watched Mac walk through the door. His let his head fall to the steering wheel and let all the air drain from his cheeks. He was head over heels over Mac. It wasn’t something soft or pliant, it was this sharp edged thing that cut like the bumps of a key along metal and paint. Dennis cared for him in the smallest and most intimate of ways, keeping him at a distance but still making sure he was safe, letting him go be stupid and stubborn but still there in case he needed him.

Dennis finally went home and ran his finger along the scratch, his nail chipping away at some of the paint that curled over its ragged edge. He sighed once more as he made his way inside, collapsing on his bed and drumming his fingers on his chest, feeling the places that Mac had been grasping at earlier. He lay there staring up at the ridges in the ceiling paint that dipped like white waves of the ocean crashing along over Dennis’ worn body. 

The scratch could be repaired, the bruises would heal, but the good thing they had could never come back. He heard it end in the way Mac told him to stay away, and though he knew from the beginning that this was momentary thing, a fleeting gasp of sunlight that had been sheathed in grey skies, he was still a little brokenhearted with his words. Dennis knew he could not have good things for long, that Mac was just his dealer and Dennis was just a stranger and a buyer. That was the extent of their relationship no matter how many times Dennis leaned into his chest when he laughed or how electric it was when he was around, no matter how wordless he became when Mac told him how much he liked it when they kissed slow and unhurried. That was all they were, all they’d ever be.

The week after when Mac finally showed back up to school, by some grace or miracle he caught Dennis’ eye in the hallway. He let his knuckles brush along Dennis’ as he walked by, his fingers reaching out for his and for a moment —for the smallest of seconds— they were holding hands right there in the midst of a crowd. It was gone in the same breath but Dennis couldn’t stop smiling about it for the whole rest of the day. 

They met out under the bleachers after school, and with a hand covered in the faintest of bruises; Mac offered him that joint he’d asked for in the bathroom stall all those days ago. They smoked out under the bleachers, Charlie and Dee making their way over and finding their place in the long grass beside them. Dee rested her head on her brother's lap, passing the joint to Charlie who was hanging on the metal support beams, legs swiminging wildly in mid air.

It was a quiet serenity they’d built for themselves, one that they lived in for the rest of that year. Mac and Dennis moved carefully around each other, careful not to get lost in whatever thing they had, careful to ignore it and only bring it up when they were sure nobody else was around. Dennis knew he did not get good things often and Mac was convinced of it being dirty and wrong. But he let himself linger in the soft glances Dennis threw his way and tried not to think about his hands on his skin. They kept each other at a distance how they needed it to be.

Though, beneath the bleachers they could hang around each other a little longer, content as a group to let their eyes and bodies hang heavy in the smoke that billowed out into the sky above. They were content to hang around, suspended in the break of time they’d burnt out with the ends of a joint together. Sometimes Mac would hold Dennis’ gaze for a little longer than he probably should, and sometimes Dennis would laugh a little too hard and bury his nose in the crook of Mac’s shoulder. But they were content like that, holding each other at arms length for as long as they could hold it.


	8. I Live With You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dennis reckons with the aftermath of their fling.

Walking down the aisle, the altar looked so far away, so small in his line of sight. White lace was draped along its wrought iron structure, the priest standing tall and mighty beneath it smile over at Mac. The crowd murmured as they shifted in their seats and whispered to each other, watching Mac’s feet carefully tread across the red carpet that stretched like a tongue lapping at the holy water he doused himself with trying to cleans himself in his spirit and his soul.

Mac stood tall and mighty beside the priest, smiling through the tightness in his jaw. He felt it clench and he presses his fingers to the joint, trying to soothe the ache that had blossomed there. It began to spread to his hands and his feet as sweat started to roll down his forehead. 

“It's hot in here father,” Mac whispered, panic spiking in his voice as he tries to loosen his collar. The priest just nodded towards the silhouette standing in the doorway at the other end of the aisle, their frame engulfed in a blinding white light. Mac smiled, he felt his heart stammer in his chest at the sight of it and for a moment he felt something like happiness tugging at the frayed ends of his heart strings.

The crowd gasped and Mac turned to see the lace decorating the altar begin to smoulder. The whole thing erupted into flames and swallowed up the wooden beams of the church, smothering everybody inside with a heat burning like hellfire. The figure at the other end of the room called out to Mac, reaching out an arm that caught hold of his sleeve. They held onto him with all the fury of a thousand men as Mac tried to heave their heavy body up from the floorboards that split open from the heat.

His lover’s hand loses his grip on Mac’s sleeve and he falls to his knees; crying and grasping at the scorched rubble despite the heat burning up the palms of his hands. He can't see through the tears in his eyes, choking on ash and soot as he cries out for somebody to save them both. He tilts his eyes towards the ceiling where a wooden beam collapses down on him from the heavens.

Dennis could hear Mac mumbling in his sleep from across the apartment, could feel him tossing and turning in his bed in the other room. He stayed there in his own room with his back turned away from the door, his eyes stuck open unable to sleep through all that guilt wallowing up inside him. He’d been running hot lately —boiling and simmering all bubbling over like the skin of a hand seared to the hot stove top— ever since the day at the bar that drove everybody out of his way for fear of his fury. There was something about it that he liked; people being wary of him like he was dangerous, there was something exciting in being left alone and feared. He liked being dressed in wrought iron armor that was wrapped around his wrists like a dog bite. 

Dennis was restless in his sleep that night too, things he’d buried down deep were threatening to surface behind his eyes so he kicked off the sheets and pulled himself together. He looked himself up and down in his bedroom mirror; his eyes all glassy, hair curled just above his ear, his jaw perfectly cut like glass or diamond. He was beautiful, he remarked to himself, and somebody this beautiful needs somebody to love them. He was desperate for that though he would never admit it. He married Moureen in the hopes that he would find that thing he was searching for in someone else. He wanted to be saved by her in some incredible feat of romance. It didn’t work because of course it didn’t —it couldn’t. The empty bottles of liquor scattered along the foot of his bed tell that story very well. He was a man so desperate to forget himself that he would marry a hundred women and drink until his blood turned brown before ever thinking of what he might really want.

He’d had enough of sitting there listening to Mac dream about him, sick of feeling helpless to the longing that was constantly pulling him towards the closed bedroom door with the ghastly crucifix hanging on it, blankly staring at him with judgment in his hanging head. 

Dennis walked past it and stumbled outside to his car parked on the curb. He drove down the street, ignoring the strange aura of decay that the buildings seemed to emit around one am. His hands gripped the steering wheel so that his knuckles turned white, he releases them for a moment so he can feel the warmth of the blood rushing back through them. He was falling off the deep end, maybe, not feeling anything but the faint murmur of his heart or whatever was left of it. He hadn’t slept in three days, hadn’t eaten in two. He felt rundown yet flawless, so high yet swinging so low. 

He drew a breath from deep within his chest and collapsed at the bar. He felt more justified in his slow drinking death by doing it at a bar, felt less guilty and less like an alcoholic by being there instead of in his bed. He swung himself into a stupor, one final act before the sweeping of the storm coursing through him, brewing by the hand of liquor and tequila. He was rotten, his breath smelled like dead things and like he was decomposing from the inside out. He wanted to forget but the more he drank the more he remembered; how sweet Mac had felt above him, his hands brushing against his adams apple, mouth pressing down the columns of his throat. He saw them in the park with his head against his shoulder and it was the sweeter and the more tender moments like those that really made Dennis ache. It wasn’t the nights spent in bed fucking until light broke through the blinds that made him hurt because he could handle that. He knew sex, he knew what to do with that and how to compartmentalize it. It was all the times after; lying in bed with him, the closeness in the bar with their hands alway almost to touching, and how he wished and wanted them to. 

Dennis was crying. He was full blown sobbing alone at the bar. There were lights dimmed just so, the electricity wavering from the strength of his currents. He pushed himself up from his stool in a quiet rage, a hushed whirlwind of hurt and anger. He climbed into his car and by some miracle or some divinity of grace he made it to Charlie’s without getting into a wreck. He knocked on the door and slumped against the wall all snotty and teary eyed, wiping his nose on his sleeve and grimacing at the sight of it. He looked around the hall in a paranoid manor like he was afraid somebody was going to witness him in his darkest hour. 

He banged on the door once more. “C’mon Charlie, open up,” he groaned quietly, falling further into the doorframe.

Charlie pulled open the door all bleary eyed and disheveled, his hair sticking up in all directions like a needle towards the sun. “Jesus christ what dude, what—” he stopped short of himself upon seeing Dennis’ appearance, his hands poised over his eyes as he rubs them clear to make sure he wasn’t still dreaming. “Holy shit Dennis are you crying?” 

“Shut up,” Dennis said as he stumbled past Charlie into his apartment. “Shut up don’t make fun of me in my time of need,” he slurred, winding himself up and collapsing at the table. He glared at Frank who was still curled in the sheets, snoring deeply and obnoxiously every few moments. He still secretly blamed him for all of this, hated him for his awful parenting that ruined what could’ve been a good thing. “How do you sleep through that shit man.”

“I—I dunno you get used to it I guess—what are you doing here man, what is going on? Seriously, why are you crying?” 

“Well,” Dennis began, swinging his head somewhere in the direction of his apartment. “Mac is having a fucking dream, or nightmare, or something again.” Charlie stared at him, unsure how that warranted a full on break down. “And I—” he motioned to himself, his speech unbelievably drowsy and slurred— “I cannot sleep because of it. I need my sleep I can’t—” his breath hitched as he felt another cry or whimper coming on. He swallowed it whole, sticky around his tongue and tough going down his throat. “Truthfully, Charlie. I can’t deal with hearing him call out my name every five minutes. It’s unbearable, because I just want to sleep. I just want to lay down and sleep and forget about the whole thing but I can’t ‘cause he’s right there having a fucking nightmare about it.”

“Okay,” Charlie said slowly. “Well you can sleep here if you want I mean—”

“No dude, if I wanted to sleep I wouldn’t have come here. I would’ve gone to my sisters where there's less of a risk of developing a rash or something. I just wanted—something. I wanted something I don’t—”

“Well I think some rest will do ya good—” Dennis was shaking his head in a frightening flurry and mumbling over Charlie who was trying to help in some small way. He watched helplessly as Dennis sat down at the table and banged his head against the surface, his groans fading into a growl as his hands turned into fists that collided with the wood. 

“It should be me!” he shouted in all of his suddenness. He sat upright and steadied himself with his hands gripping the sides of the table for dear life while Charlie just stared at him blankly across the room “I should be the one having nightmares, not him.” Dennis was crying again, his bottom lip trembling a little around the words that were so difficult for him to say. “I’m the one who got married, Goddammit. I’m the one that suffered through that woman, who had the gall to marry her. Not him. I did that for us and he’s the one having nightmares?” He scoffed around the anger biting at his throat, a hot cry bubbling up from somewhere really broken inside. “I gave up everything to do that, and yeah so what okay? So what I never loved her, never could love her. I still fucking tried, and if I hadn’t it would’ve been Mac sitting here breaking down to you, not me. I did that for him and he thinks I don’t love—”

Charlie stopped him, sat down at the table in the hushed light of dawn and brought him to a crashing halt, “Dennis I think you gotta stop talking before you say something you’re gonna regret dude.” He didn’t want to be caught in this crossfire between them. Charlie knew as well as anybody that Dennis loved Mac, he loved him so much somewhere beneath that guise of hatred. But Charlie also knew that revealing that while he was drunk was not the right thing to do, that it would only be a cause for regret. He knew it was something Dennis was just not ready for if he couldn’t even admit it to himself while sober. Charlie at least wanted to be drunk too if he was gonna say it.

“Well?” Dennis offered, slouching into himself like he’d ripped a little hole in his side and all the air was slowly being let out of his body. “It’s true Charlie.”

“I know.”

“And I know what he thinks of me, of course I do. You all think that I’m some monster, that I’ve got no feelings, nothing in here at all. I’m a husk!” He sniffed, hiccuping a little with the weight of all this emotion. “Well maybe I am, but what does it say about me, that I married her? That I wanted to be love and be loved? That’s gotta mean something Charlie—” Dennis pleaded with him, leaning in as he grabs the sleeves of Charlie’s sweatshirt, holding onto him with all his might. Behind them Frank shifted in the bed, snored a little before rolling over onto his back. 

Charlie saw it, he felt his desperation. He knew this about Dennis and knew that he married Maureen like she would fix this awful curse inside him. He still let him say it because he also knew that Dennis needed to hear it to know if it was really true. 

“I didn’t really think it would work,” Dennis mumbled, pulling away from him and wiping his eyes against the back of his hand. “You know, but I married her, didn’t I? Shouldn't I be the one dreaming about what we lost or what we could’ve had? Oh but I’m an empty husk aren’t I, So what do I know about loving or feeling?” It sounded as though he was asking someone much higher than Charlie, somebody with grace and with a righteous power. “I married her, Charlie. I did try, I tried. It should be me.” 

Above the heavens cracked with wind and thunder rolling in low from the heat. There was nothing there in the sky to answer to, no holy spirit drifting through the clouds and nothing to make right with. It was just Dennis and his sore heart, needing to mend it but not knowing how. And this was perhaps the most painful part about sitting there in Charlie’s apartment with his heart bleeding through his open palms on the table; the fact that nobody could fix this but himself, and the fact that he didn’t even know where to start.


	9. You've Got Nothing To Say

He cannot find him. The crowd was crashing against the walls of the gym like a wave, like the ocean turbulent and free. Mac couldn’t find Dennis and his heart was catching fire in his chest with fear and something smouldering along the lines of anger.

Outside Dennis was crying heavy like rain against glass or like wind against the leaves of a tree. He cried into his palms, his tie slung around his neck and his dress shirt untucked from his belt. He smoked his cigarettes until his chest felt hot and heavy, flicking the glowing embers out into the woods that surrounded the hill of the parking lot. He secretly hoped the woods would go up in flames, that he would see an orange glow flickering up into the air like hungry tongues crawling up the hillside. He cried with empty betrayal, trying not to picture Mac fucking his prom date and not knowing what he was more angry at; the fact that it was his prom date or the fact that Mac was fucking anybody at all.

Dee had broke the news to him and he could have strangled her right then and there had it not been for the crowd clinging to the walls of the school beside them. What was he to do? What was there for him to say? He imagined punching Mac over and over again until his face was bloodied and blue, but where would that leave him? 

So maybe he could just stifle it with smoke and beer, maybe he could turn to Mac and ask him how his night had been the next day, to lie and say he found another girl who was much prettier and dantier than the one he’d brought with them because lying was better than being alone, it was better than losing the only friend he’d ever truly had.


	10. Makes The Flame Burn Good

Mac felt strange, felt the pull of something new inside. He caved his mouth around an offered body, against a name deferred. He pulled the new body up close to his chest and the two sighed together heavy and synchronized in time.

“Kiss me,” the man breathed beneath him, and Mac swooned and beckoned to his call. He pulled his hands through the man's hair, fingers threading through the blond locks that were dyed and browning at the roots. 

The bathroom stall was cramped and crowded. The confined space caused Mac to steal all of the other man’s breaths who took his in return. Outside the bathroom the music from the club shook the walls, shook their bodies pressed up tight against one another, and shook the muscle that trembled beneath their skin. 

This sort of thing was done in secret. When Mac would come back covered in glitter and sweat the others back at the bar would look away. He would refuse to explain the bruises on his neck and refuse to say why he was coming back so late. He would deny it with such fervency and vigor that it no longer seemed like a lie. But there in the bathroom stall, those secrets could be ushered in between the small pockets of air between two bodies offered up by the grace of lust and the purity of need. There is where Mac would speak only truths tinged with want and desire. There was nothing he needed to hide there, there was no room for intimacy when he was like this and it was exactly how Mac wanted it to be. He didn’t want to really feel anything but pleasure, there was to be no pain unless it was chased with rapture. 

Mac felt some sort of rebellion in being with a man. Normally thoughts of hell fire would be enough to send him running for fear of the burn, but some nights he found himself kind of liking the thrill of it. He felt defiance in the way he let the man take him into his hands, in the way his breath hitched with every sigh, how he gripped his shoulders and shut his eyes. The man’s hands would still and Mac would sink his teeth into his shoulder, goading him along. He felt the thrill of leaning into the searing burn of pleasure, in allowing himself this right here in the dark of a dirty bathroom in the back of a club, it’s walls shaking with bass and tremor alongside him. He leaned into the man’s hand and felt no shame in touching him right back, offering to give pleasure and ecstasy in the same ways he’d taken it. He pulled back and kissed him deeply like he wanted to. 

“Fuck, I thought you’d never done this before,” the man mumbles, his dark hands pushing and pulling at Mac’s chest. Mac snickered, pushing away to take the man in for a second. He was so beautiful; his eyelashes brushing against his flushed cheeks, his two lips parted just so Mac could listen to the smallest utterances and shudders fall from them. 

Mac leaned in closer to his ear and whispered, “I lied,” and he revels in the way that pulled another shudder and a sigh from the man. He loved how he could see it roll through his chest and his shoulders. There was something so exotic about this, something that felt so good that for a moment Mac couldn't even pretend like it could be anything but Holy.

Mac stopped going to bed at night when his small affair with Dennis had ended so he came here instead. The nightmares were getting too real. He was throwing up every morning at the thought of them and they would stayed with him throughout the day. So he started coming here instead, started talking to strangers and letting them push him up against walls just how Dennis used to do. They were without the same vigor and passion he’d felt with him, but they were more than enough to quell the surge of sadness in his heart and breast. It would be at least another month before he was able to get a full night of sleep.

Those nights would not evade him of guilt though. Mac would lower himself down onto his knees and beg in front of the Heavenly Father and Holy Spirit the morning after he would break and bend at the feet of other men. He would go to church and let whispers of Hail Mary’s fall from his tongue while kater on countless strangers would ask him to, “come for me,” Mac would beg Him to, “absolve me”. 

It would be a year before Mac stopped going to the clubs all together, before the guilt and the sin would become too much to bear at night. He knew of course that the word gay existed and it could very well be applied to him. He knew deep down that he could not deny himself of this forever; but he was going to very well try, and if he was going to do it he might as well be good at it. He was going to fuck tens from now on, he was going to prove himself to everyone that he could be good and righteous and Godly. He was going to prove to Dennis that he could be all of those things too. 

But something about it just doesn’t work the same anymore, it was beginning to feel impossible to fake. He cursed himself for giving in to his urges, cursed himself for ruining straight sex for himself because now he couldn’t even get it up and it didn’t matter how many things he tried to imagine because he was still sticking it into a woman.

Dusty was a ten —Mac knew that. He knew that objectively, this is a woman people would love to fuck, that this was a woman who would insight jealousy and rage over hundreds of men, probably in Dennis too, and that’s all he wanted to do if he was really being honest. It was a damn shame that it made him sick to his stomach to have her beneath him instead of Dennis.

“What is wrong?” Dusty asked him from outside the bathroom door. Mac was sat on the floor with his head hanging in the toilet, his arms gripping the sides of the bowl. He wipes his nose and his lips and collapses, feeling ruined and defeated. “Can I come in?” she asked. She sounded drowsy, her accent thickening her vowels. After a moment she decided she was going to come in and opened the door, staring at the pathetic mess sniveling on the bathroom floor. 

“I’m fine,” he said turning away so she couldn’t see his eyes glossing over. “It’s fine just go away.”

“I didn’t ask,” she said sharply, sighing like she was bored, her hand still clutching the doorknob. “I am getting paid for an hour, it has only been ten minutes—”

“Yes I’ll give it to you, whatever. It’s on the kitchen counter just leave me alone,” he said as he pulled his hands down over his face then gestured towards the door. 

“So you don’t want me to have sex with you?” she asked.

“Jesus Christ fuck, no I don’t. Not right now. Just go away, please.” He couldn’t look directly at her. Dusty just shrugged her shoulders and rolled her eyes, goes into the kitchen to get her drugs and leave. 

“Wait—” he said. She stopped in the doorway itching to leave. “Can you like, come back tomorrow or something? I’ll still give you drugs but can you just come back.”

“You want to pay me to not have sex with you?” she asked, a little stunned by the proposition. 

“No—well, I guess kind of yeah. Pretend to whenever my friends are around, just like make the noises or whatever.”

She stood there mulling it over for a moment, glancing out at the hall like she was envisioning herself walking down to her car where she would get high and forget this ever happened. “Ya sure, I will do that. I will pretend to have sex with you.”

“Okay,” Mac sighed, feeling a wave of relief wash over him.

“You make your boyfriend jealous—” she waved her hand at him and Mac did not protest, just glared hard at the mess in the toilet— “and you still give me angel dust. Yes?”

“Yeah, yes Christ. You will get your angel dust.”

“Okay,” she said, watches as Mac’s frame relaxes a little. She doesn’t really get it, doesn’t really care all that much either. 

A few days later they were on Mac’s bed banging up against the walls and moaning obscenely, faces thrown back as they bounce up and down on the bed. They sat across from each other fully clothed, Dusty’s legs were criss crossed so that not even her knees were touching Mac. Dennis heard them from the other room and left because if he’d stayed any longer he might’ve thrown up. They heard the door slam and erupt into laughter. 

“Oh,” Dusty said, wiping her eyes. “I have done many things, very kinky strange things, but this is by far the strangest.” 

“I think it’s a pretty sweet deal,” Mac said, pulling a plastic baggie out from under his mattress. She took out a pipe from her purse and wrapped her lips around it, sparking it up and letting her eyes blow wide. 

“So sweet,” she whispered around the exhale.“Sweet like honey.” Mac shifted in his place on the bed and waved the smoke she let plume from her mouth. “You like him?” She asked, setting the pipe down onto Mac’s nightstand. She wrapped her arms around her legs that seemed to stretch out for miles all long and lean. 

“Who?” Mac asked, feigning innocence. “Dennis? I mean, sure yeah. He’s my best friend.”

She hummed as she let the back of her head rest against the wall, staring up at Mac’s ceiling. “Oh okay. I understand.”

“There’s nothing to get. He’s my roomate. We’re best friends.”

“And best friends fuck other people to make each other jealous?”

Mac sighed, too tired to defend or explain himself. “It’s—it’s less about making him jealous. You know, because he doesn’t care if I fuck girls. We’ve always fucked girls. With Dennis it’s all a game that you have to figure out the rules to before you play. And it’s less about the fact that I’m fucking you and more about the fact that I can do better than him. I’m making him jealous but not ‘cause I’m in love with him or some shit.”

“I thought you were pretty stupid but I did not realize the severity of it,” she muttered, reaching for the pipe. Mac furrowed his brow and sulked while she laughed at him. “You think it is working then?” She asked.

“Oh absolutely. Dennis hates competition, it’s probably burning him up inside knowing that I can get a ten.” 

Of course it was never really about that. It wasn’t about the fact that Mac could get better girls than him; it was the fact that he could do better than him. It was about autonomy, because If it was really just about making him jealous then Mac would’ve just fucked a dude. 

“You didn’t get anything,” Dusty reminded him, cocking her brow from behind her pipe, her long fingers wrapping around the base. 

“Hypothetically I did though,” he grumbled, looking towards the window and wondering if he should open it before he got a contact high. 

 

-

 

Dee felt something white hot burning a hole inside her chest. She sat at the bar glaring at the wall, her cheeks pressed up against her clenched palm. She dug her nails into the soft flesh wanting to draw blood, or something, anything to keep herself from getting up and hurling the fist right into Charlie’s face. She ground her teeth as she listened to him go on and on about the Waitress, watching his deluded ego get stroked whenever she dared look at him for more than a few seconds without pure hatred and disgust. Dee could feel her blood run hot, she was so angry.

What she really wanted to tell him was that all those times he’d been wanting her, pinning for even a glance, Dee had her pinned up against walls shuddering and moaning underneath her. It was her idea to stop, she knew that. She knew she had no right to be clenching her fists in a jealous rage, she had no right to bleed with envy but she couldn’t help it, she couldn’t stop it if she tried. Dee wanted to scream at Charlie, to say something horrid and crude to him like how she did it better —loving her, fucking her—she did all of it better than he ever could. It was her idea to stop but Dee wanted nothing more than to scream at her and ask why she let her do that, why she didn't stop her or tell her not to go. 

Dee took that anger and let it roll around in her head all day, her thoughts drumming up all kinds of angry scenarios in her head. That night when she closed the bar she found herself walking past her car, her feet following a familiar path. She was going in the opposite direction of home and letting all of that resentment spill over in soul shaking cries out towards the darkness. It filled her up inside so that she was bursting at the seams; years of pain denial leaving wounds that excrete something horrid and rotten. Years of doing this to herself, of shutting herself down and taking all of her wants and desires and shoving them off of roofs and balconies from her lips in the form of cigarettes and beer. Nobody knows what she wants, she doesn't even know what she wants, because it was never a question of want or need, it was never a question of personal desire but of external necessity. Women must be pliant and motherly, their wombs must be warm and cozy; but she was carved from something stone and cold, barren and empty feeling. She was never any of those things and she wondered how little she was worth when you added up the sum of all the things she was.

Above her head mother nature shook the skies and pried them opened. Dee had only a moment to look up before she came pouring down, soaking straight through her clothes. “Fuck,” she gritted through clenched teeth. Her heart pounded still with her feet heavy on the concrete, pushing her farther and farther to the front steps of a run down apartment complex, leaning her heavy body up against the brick to catch her breath as she pushed the buzzer over and over, trying calm the mountainous swell of her chest and stomach fighting for air. “Come out!” she cried, voice fried and broken. “Please, just open the door.”

“Oh my god what—” the Waitress froze in the doorway, just a few inches away from Dee who looked as though she was melting in the rain. “Dee oh my God what are you doing—”

“I just,” Dee paused to catch her breath, turning to look out at the street that was black and flooded. She stood there in front of the Waitress with her heart caught in her throat, feeling something like a sob shaking from her lungs. “I couldn’t stand listen to Charlie talk about you. And you know, it was my idea but I just, I don’t really know what I’m doing anymore and it scares me—” she was crying now, it was hard to see it in the dark with the rain and the wind but the Waitress could see Dee crying. “I miss you Ellie.” She said her name; she didn’t think Dee even remembered but something about it was so sudden and striking that she felt tears sting the corners of her eyes. Dee was still heaving at her feet, looking so small with the way her clothes stuck to her frame. She wiped her eyes on the back of her sleeve but it didn’t help anything, still soaked so close to the bone that she was shaking. 

Ellie stepped out to her, protected from the rain by the awning above the door. She gathered Dee up in her arms and held her, pressed her head to her chest and let her cry into it. “I’m so sorry,” Dee whimpered. Ellie knew deep down this was a temporary thing, she knew that Dee was just lonely and jealous and angry —probably very drunk too— but she still kept her close and steady, pulling her hand through her wet hair to keep it off her face. Dee gripped her shirt as she wept quiet and subdued. It felt like taking refuge in an angels arms or some other heavenly assimilation that she didn’t believe in. This felt closer to being with God than she had been in a long time, and even though it was temporary, even though it was just acting on an impulse, it was good and right. For one moment Dee felt warm again.

 

-

 

Steam from two mugs of coffee rose to kiss the morning sun that stretched its yellow limbs out across the kitchen table, frozen and stilled by a restless body out on the balcony and another still sleeping in bed. The clock on the wall whistled in the silence of the kitchen, ticking in the absence of creaking chairs, of the crinkle of newspapers and the ceramic touching softly down on the table. It was so quiet that if you listened close enough, the sound of the refrigerator could be heard as a faint hum throughout the room. 

Dennis leaned over the railing of the balcony and dipped his head over the street below. Smoke poured from his lips, breathing and sighing out into the morning air. He crossed his bare legs and rolled his shoulders beneath the wrinkled white tee shirt he’d found off of his bedroom floor. He heard stirring in the bedroom, Mac moving through the apartment, first to the bathroom and then to the table to get his coffee and join him out on the balcony. He drank beside him in silence, the rush of the South Philly drumming through the crevices of the city. Mac stood so that his arm brushed against Dennis’ own poised on the railing, a cigarette resting along his fingers that were rising gracefully to meet pursed lips. 

It was a beautiful morning. They would move through it slow and unintentioned; first into the kitchen to drink another cup of coffee in silence, where Mac would rest his feet on Dennis’ leg and he would bury his face in the sports section of the newspaper so he could give Mac the comics. After, they would move to the couch and Dennis would let his head fall slowly to Mac’s chest while they watched TV, letting his body rise and fall with each breath he took.  
It felt like such a pleasure just to be alive these days, to feel the grandiosity of just breathing alongside somebody. Dennis hadn’t felt like he could do that for a long time. 

The would drink late into the evening and then have sex in the bed; slow and careful like it really meant something. Mac would kiss him so gently that Dennis’ breath would stop short in his chest. They would lay there together until one fell asleep, usually Mac first and then the other. Most of the time Dennis would lay there wide awake, feeling lost somehow in the sea of all his tenderness.

On those nights, sometimes the wind would rock against the bedroom window. Dennis has shut it about a million times but it always finds a way to open itself just a sliver just so the cold air could rush in and make him shiver all the way down to his bones. Mac felt him and would pull him in tighter in his sleep. Dennis would pull the blankets all the way up to his ears and still be freezing, he needed the sun in the morning to thaw the layer of ice forming across his skin at night. 

Dennis could feel so explosive at times. He could feel so cold or so hot and it was rare he ever felt anything in between. But when he was lost in the eb and flow of Mac and his routine; he sometimes felt still. He found its newness warm and inviting, yet something to be careful of getting used to. He felt it a fragile thing like it was not for others to see or disturb, and everyone else seemed to understand this too, they saw Dennis and his fragile newfound thing and let him have it. Charlie didn’t say anything, though he knew. Dee would just shrug and take it as a given, as something she’s known all her life. Frank was oblivious and it was probably best that way. 

Dennis would lay in bed with Mac staring at the dark with his tired eyes that were hungry for feeling full, his iris’s empty of thought except for the kind that felt blood thirsty and dark. He would stare at the shadows in his bedroom like they somehow knew he was so undeserving of something so careful and so demanding of this trust they’d built with one another. He could not command the sort of willingness within himself that would allow him to be held a little bit tighter at night. 

Sometimes being with Mac did not bring a sense of relief; it was instead like the sound of planes coming down, crashing through his skull was all the force of a bomb. 

Mac was unafraid and that made Dennis mad. He could be so in denial of every aspect of himself and yet he was so alright with loving him. Mac was so in love with him and every morning he got to wake up and feel it like the sea gently caressing the shore with warm tides taking in the sand, enveloped with the heat of an oceanic embrace. It made Dennis so angry sometimes because Mac could not even admit he was gay, but he could see this and know it to be so true. He could see Dennis, look out at him every morning across the kitchen table in broad daylight and still know that the loved him. Dennis did not even love himself. How could he ever love somebody else, somebody who has seen him so intimately for so many years? He was not ready to see himself staring back through Mac’s eyes. 

But Mac was unafraid; he took Dennis to coffee shops and sometimes held his hand on the bus ride back home. He would take them dancing, take them out of the city they knew so well and would bring them downtown away from prying eyes. This brilliant secret thing was not for anybody but themselves, but sometimes when Dennis was dancing right up close to him in bars—breathless on his chest and neck— Mac felt unafraid of being seen. He was naively in love, searching for unrealistic ideals in every movement of their hands and feet. He was looking for a future in the way Dennis would cup his cheek and hold him still while the club around them swelled like the ocean; like wild wild waves.

Maybe Dennis was nothing but a liar who was incapable of loving anyone but himself, Mac didn’t care. When the music would slow and he would hold him flush against his tired body, he didn’t care. Perhaps he would’ve come into himself so much sooner if he’d just learned to break away, if he’d just let himself walk away from Dennis and his uncertain dark stare. But he couldn’t find it in himself to care.

On nights where the wind howled through the crack in the window, Dennis sighed and met its gentle roar with a gust of his own breath. He rolled over and over and over but couldn’t find a position that would make his head go quiet. He clutched his hands to his face and shuddered, Mac’s body heat behind him steadily burning holes in his back. He felt that warmth press against him as Mac wound his arms around his side, burying his head in the crook of his shoulder.

He laid there with his arms around Dennis’ frame for a moment before whispering, “Why are you still awake?” into his shoulder.

“Dunno,” Dennis grumbled. 

He rolled over and Mac shifted onto his back, extending his arm for Dennis to fold himself into. The chill brought by the open window sent goose bumps up Dennis’ spine and he trembled when it was met by the warmth coming from Mac’s side. The weather was such a temporary thing, he could just sleep on the couch and wait out the cold, but Mac wouldn’t let him. He just held Dennis flush against his tired body until he could stop shaking. He wouldn’t even care if his arm got sore. He wouldn’t mind at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kinda a long one and the end was sorta a ramble :/ idk how i feel about this


	11. Punch drunk, dumbstruck, pot luck happy happy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mac meets someone knew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahh im so excited for the next few chapters. u get to meet possibly my fave character ive ever "made" (sort of..youll see haha). enjoy!!!!!

He sat at a bar somewhere north of here. This felt like a last night or like the end of something big and worldly. It felt like the end of a life.

“This is it for me,” Mac slurred dramatically, bowing his head to the wood gloss of the bar. The drawl of the singer on stage lulled his eyes to droop and his mouth to shut. He caught his chin in his hands, putting the whole weight of his body in his palms.

“You alright?” a woman asked him. She is slender with the grace and air of a dancer, her brown hair pulled back into a loose bun. She wasn’t particularly ugly, Mac thought, he could take her home if he wanted to. Although there was something else in his head that told him no, it was okay to rest tonight. 

“Yeah,” he said, stopping for a moment to stare at the wall of alcohol and thinking about taking it all while the bartender had his back turned, thought about drinking himself to death, that maybe tonight will be the night. “Mmm, no actually. No I’m not.” He didn’t even know how he was still talking never mind keeping himself up right. He let his head go and it bobbed up and down in the air, body swinging in its place on the bar stool. “M’ very drunk.”

“I can see that,” the woman said, laughing a little. She flagged the bartender down and ordered him a water and some food, pushing it in front of him coaxing him upright. “You need a cab or anything?” she asked. Mac could see a tattoo on her bicep peaking out beneath her tee shirt. She looked a little like himself in a weird way. The room was spinning violently but she stood still in the midst of it all, still enough for him to look at her closely. 

He shook his head, looking down at the floor. “I don’t wanna go home,” he said deflated.

“Ah I see, home troubles?” she asked.

“Sort of,” he grumbled

He looked up at her for a moment, considering maybe asking to go back to her place so he wouldn’t have to be alone. He was past a last ditch effort, felt like maybe this was his final shout towards the heavens to make him right again. “What are you doing tonight,” he asked and immediately saw a sharpness glaze over her eyes. 

“I’m not interested in fucking you, if that’s what you’re asking.” Her warm demeanor instantly faded, he was a little offended at the assumption if he was being honest.

“No, I don’t care that you’re ugly I just—”

“Dude oh my God,” she said, stopping whatever horrid thing he was about to say. “I’m a lesbian first of all.”

Mac froze. Something about being in the presence of a gay person made his blood run hot, felt something deep and unfelt rise in his stomach. It was different than a sort of romantic connection, it was something like he wanted to hold onto her, pour his heart out because he wanted somebody desperately to relate and tell him it’s ok. 

“If you have a problem with that you can leave man, I don’t have time to deal with bigoted assholes tonight,” she said, eyes fixated on the Tv hanging overhead. 

“No, no I don’t. It’s confusing. I don’t know.”

There was something in his voice that she recognized, something like a longing she could see behind his eyes. She softened a bit, hesitantly offering her shoulder to him again. “I don’t owe you this, so watch yourself,” she warned. “But I’ll bite. What’s confusing?” 

She was prepared to hear some story about how he’s not homophobic, just doesn’t agree with her lifestyle, or something along those lines, and she was perfectly ready to let the dude sit there and drink himself to death if that was the case. But there was a little sliver of intrigue within herself, a small voice telling her maybe that wasn’t it.

Her instinct was right. Mac found himself wanting to say something he hasn’t ever been able to admit. He found himself on the brink of a revelation shrouded by pain and fear. He hoped that maybe she could feel it too. 

“Being in love,” he said simply. “That’s confusing. And, you know. If hypothetically I was you know—” he waved his hand gesturing to the woman— “If I was that way or whatever, that would make love be even more confusing.” He was dancing around every word that left a horrid taste in his mouth and she could see that.

“It is,” she agreed. “It’s a hard thing to understand about yourself.”

“Right but like, hypothetically,” he reminded. “It would be harder if I was like you, which I’m not, but if I was it would just be a whole ‘nother thing to deal with.”

“Right of course,” she said, smiling a little. She knew repression when she saw it. But he wasn’t ready to hear it. 

He began again with a little more gusto this time, “And I just don’t understand how somebody could know they’re, you know like, gay or whatever. I don’t get that. Like if you’ve never been with a guy how would you even know you’re a lesbian.”

“Well,’ she said, sitting back in her seat a little. “First off all you’re assuming I’ve never been with a man, and not that it’s any of your business but I haven’t. Second of all, how does a straight person know they’re straight if they’ve never been with the same gender?”

Mac thought for a moment, humming at a loss for words. “I dunno, they just know I guess,” he said, a small realization coming across himself. “But maybe the straight person doesn’t know though. How can that be real when a straight person thinks they might be gay in their thirties or forties. Shouldn’t they have always known just like you said?”

Mac looked down at his hands, watching the outlines blur together in his eyes. He wants her to say something like that can’t happen, that a gay person always knows and if they’re just realizing it now it will go away, that they’re just faking it. 

“I think that’s fine too,” she said and he simultaneously felt relieved and scared all at once. “Like I said, it’s a difficult thing to know about yourself. But if you’re questioning, it’s always worth looking into, ‘cos you don’t wanna take that shit to the grave you know. That’s a lot of burden to carry on your own.” 

She drank her beer and took her eyes from the Tv to Mac’s pointed stare zoning off somewhere in the distance. His eyes well up just the smallest bit. She wanted to reach out to him and tell him it’s alright but she couldn’t promise this stranger that. She didn’t know where he came from or who he was with. She only knew he’s struggling with a battle between himself and his morals, and she knew that war all too well. 

“I know that when I came out it was scary. I grew up very religious and I thought I was damned to hell,” she said laughing a little.

Mac chuckled a little too, unsure if it was something to laugh about. It resonated with him though, the pressure to marry the people you were supposed to and be loyal to God. She seemed much stronger than him though, it seemed like she’d always known what she wanted.

“I came out to my friends and it was horrifying, they didn't speak to me for months and I felt so alone. But it was worth it, because I got to wake up to my girlfriend every morning and eat dinner with her at night. I got to have a life I thought was reserved for only certain people, definitely not for people like me.”

He couldn't imagine what that was like. Any resemblance of a life like that felt so out of reach. He couldn't imagine a life worth living right then. “And it was really worth it?” Mac asked, suddenly more sober than he’s ever felt in his entire life. 

She closed her eyes and spoke without even thinking, “Absolutely. I used to be so unsure of myself, so lost and afraid. Look at me now though, I’m a big ol’ dyke and nothing but good things have come from it.”

Mac’s eyes widened and he ducked his head down low when he heard the word, whispered to her all hushed and forbidden, “Did you just say—aren’t we not suppose to say that anymore?” 

She laughed at him and he was a little offended. “I mean you can’t no.”

“Then why can you?” he grumbled. “That doesn’t feel very fair.”

She sighed, normally she’d tell him to google it but she wasn’t entirely confident he would even remember this conversation anyway. “The word has a dark history, kind of like the f-word or the n-word. You know. It’s been used against lesbians to put us down and by reclaiming it, in a way it sort of gives us some of that power back. It’s like punching up instead of punching down. But It’s never been used against you so why would you use it, yanno.” 

Mac shrugged found himself speaking before he could filter any of his thoughts. “And so, theoretically, if I was a gay man. I could say the f-word.” 

“Theoretically sure, whatever. Though I don’t suggest coming out just to use the f-word, but sure hypothetically you could if you were.” 

She explained to him the history behind the word, told him why it was a horrible and awful thing. There was something about learning the history of it—of knowing that gay people existed before him and his father and all of the things that have held him in chains, that have shackled him to pain and despair and guilt for his whole life—there was something so reassuring in knowing he was not the only one. 

“Are you crying?” she asked in the break of the conversation, laughing a little with the tension. 

Mac wanted to say yes and cry even harder. He wanted to tell her everything and not burden the weight of this alone anymore. This stranger had showed him more kindness and acceptance than he’d ever experienced in his entire life and he wasn’t quite sure he was very deserving of it. But still he didn’t answer her, just kept his eyes staring heavy at the wall in front of his—bottles of alcohol on the shelves glistening like stars with the way his tears blurred the light. 

She smiled and said, “It’s okay,” reaching out her hand to wrap around his. And something about the way she said it felt as though she was holding him up to the light. 

She left him her number on a napkin with the name Leah scrawled out beneath it. Leah put her hand on his shoulder and left him with that, said to call anytime he felt sober and ready to talk. Mac held the napkin and stared at the numbers until it blurred in his vision and the ink nearly bled.


	12. I Hear My Heart Breaking Tonight, Do You Hear It Too?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mac and Dennis say goodbye in ways they're not supposed to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is literally my favorite chapter of this entire fic and i hope you like it too :-)

The rush of traffic outside the Range Rover numbed the silence of the parking lot like Tv static in an empty room. The quiet hush of the cars going by sang in tune to nervous breathing and unsteady hands in the car. The neon convenience store signs behind two bodies lit up the places that the light wouldn't touch between them, it made the liminal spaces in between them glow. 

Mac’s hand was resting on the center console, every few seconds moving closer and closer to Dennis’ own in his lap. Dennis pulled at the folds in his jeans as he took in a nervous breath, feeling his heart try to stretch its wings out from his chest. Behind them the sign faltered and flickered casing a momentary lapse in light. Mac held his breath with it and looked out the window, missing Dennis’ face reflecting back at him through the glass. 

“I’m pissed,” Mac said, though there was no bite to it. “I hate this.”

Dennis chewed on the inside of his cheek and sighed. He didn’t know how to make this better, he didn’t even think Mac would care to be honest. “My dad paid a lot for this man,” he told him, trying to get Mac to look at him again. “Besides dude, it’s not like I won’t ever see you again.” He caught Mac rolling his eyes in the reflection of the window and Dennis huffed in response.

He turned to look out the windshield at the rush of traffic in the street. He watched Mac take his hand away and cross his arms over his chest. Dennis scowled at him for acting so petty. “Don’t be so dramatic,” he said, though he felt it too, felt it like it was the end of something. 

They would’ve had to stop this anyway, people were beginning to suspect it wasn’t Maureen Ponderosa sneaking in his bedroom window at night and Mac was in no way ready to accept that. Dennis was sure he was still convinced this was just a friendship, that it was a one time thing type of deal but Dennis knew better than that. He thought about prom, about having to work up the strength to go out and perform and perform and perform, and for who else other than his father or his mother? For who else other than those he would be leaving behind. None of that seemed worth it to him anymore. But Mac was stuck here. He still lived with his mother, still saw his father every now and again from behind cell walls. Mac had no way out like he did, and maybe that’s where some of this resentment was coming from, maybe he envied how easy it was for Dennis to be himself. 

“Whatever dude, it just fucking sucks,” Mac said finally, arms crossing tighter over his chest.

Dennis laughed, “What, you gonna miss me or somethin’?” He was teasing, trying to make Mac smile. He saw the crook in Mac’s cheek as he tried to force back a grin before he succumbed to a laugh. 

Mac looked down at his feet and got deathly serious all of a sudden. “Yeah man, I am,” he said. 

Dennis didn’t know what to do with it all. He had no way to respond, felt completely devoid of the capacity to return the sentiment. 

He felt himself leaning in just the smallest bit closer to Mac who had closed himself off still, resigning himself as close as possible to the window. He sat there with his eyes stuck to the floor, looking at Dennis from the corner of his eye, terrified to move his head because he knew if he did he would see Dennis suddenly so brave and fearless looking right at him. His gaze felt warm and safe, it felt like everything Mac wanted so desperately but knew he would never have, and yet it was there quite literally staring at him in the face.

Mac swallowed something heavy and dry in his throat and turned to him. “What?” he asked softly, acting as though he was oblivious to Dennis’ stare because he was much too afraid to admit his willingness and knowing participation to whatever was going to happen.

Dennis opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, his whole body froze unable to give a proper response. “I dunno,” he whispered, though his cracked syllables barely made a sound. 

He breathed in deeply, leaned in a little bit closer so that he was just a few breaths away from Mac. He prepared himself for the rejection he was about to feel, for Mac’s hand that was poised and ready on the door handle to open it and run out into the parking lot, to spit in his face and call him a fag. 

Mac stared at him with his eyes wide and petrified. His body went cold with the rush of nerves and he was no longer operating under conscious thought when he leaned in close too. 

It was slow and careful, how Mac leaned in just the smallest bit to meet Dennis; but the act itself was extraordinary. The kiss was absent of heat, there was no rush of hands or the clash of tongues. It was so different to how they usually were, fumbling under the bleachers or something quick and hushed behind locked doors in Dennis’ house. This kiss was undemanding, it was tender and unhurried unlike anyway they’d ever been before. 

Dennis slid his hand up to Mac’s cheek silently asking him to move with him. Mac’s hands found his shoulders or his hands or his hips in the dark, anything he could touch to bring closer, to hold onto. The neon sign outside illuminated their faces like fireworks sparking and misfiring above their heads. Dennis sighed into the kiss, a quiet electricity humming through them.

They broke away, taking in each other's shallow breaths, taking in the pain and heart of what was riveting between them in a rhythmic beat and time. Mac twisted his hands in Dennis’ shirt and pressed his forehead to his, afraid to look up at him for fear of seeing himself reflected there. 

“That was goodbye wasn’t it,” Mac asked him, his voice breaking on the consonants, heartache whittling it away into a whisper. 

His fist clenched a little tighter as Dennis smoothed his thumb along his cheekbone, admiring what a beautiful man he was even swaddled in the dark with only the light of some shitty gas station. He wished he could see him like that in the day.

Dennis gave him a small smile, huffed a laugh and looked over Macs shoulder as he thought to himself for a moment. He watched the cars fly by in fast and fleeting flashes and turned his face back to Mac’s. “I don’t want it to be,” he said finally. “Do you?” 

Mac shook his head and they made some sort of truce that neither of them would ever mention or acknowledge again. They promised a sort of unspoken codependency draped around their wrists. Dennis brought his hand to Mac’s neck and felt what it was to have hearts beating well and alive into the night, wondering what that might've looked like in the day.


	13. I Couldn't Say It To Myself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dennis is struggling is college and needs to make a change, however scary that may be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is so wholesome until it isnt sjfksjf. tw for minor ed mentions!!

He called Dee who answered like she had just woken up. “What asshole?” she mumbled, smoothing her hair tangled in knots behind her head. 

 

“Dee?” he said, and she couldn’t even picture what he looked like. He sounded fragile and real small, like a child even though he never really was one. It scared her to hear him like this. She sat up in bed and listened to the sounds of him sniffing like he’d been crying.

 

“You sound like shit,” she remarked, her voice was soft around the edges though, there was no animosity in her words. 

 

“Yeah.”

 

She thought for a moment, told him she’d come get him, whispering that it was going to be okay under her breath like she figured he needed to hear it. 

 

Dennis looked so small sitting in the middle of her couch. He’d never been to her apartment before, his wide eyes taking it all in. If he wasn’t so tired he’d probably be making fun of her decor by now. Probably something about it being too tacky. She made him coffee so he’d stop shivering. Her apartment was warm and she could not figure out why he is shaking. 

 

She sat across from him and set her own mug down on the table, handing him a blanket that he wrapped around his shoulders. 

 

“Have you eaten?” she wondered out loud, a block of worry lodged in her throat. 

 

He looked up at her for a moment and stilled as though he was considering lying to her. He couldn’t answer her verbally, couldn’t move his mouth or make the words come out. He just shook his head and Dee sighed, racking her hands through her hair. 

 

“Okay,” she said, getting up to make him something, anything. 

 

She made him toast and he ate the crust around the edges. 

 

“The dorms are killing me,” he said, so dramatic like he was reciting likes to an empty theatre. “It’s so lonely there, I need people, or someone who isn't just some dude who spends every night at the library or with his stupid fucking girlfriend. I need real people. I can’t stand it.” 

 

“You should get an apartment,” Dee said, suggested getting their father to pay for it, he wouldn’t notice, he already paid for hers she told him. Dennis agreed, told her that some leg room might do him good. 

 

Truthfully, he was on the brink of telling her something that night. His hands clutched the coffee mug like if he were to let go it might shatter in his hands. Dee could sense it too, she could feel his urgency. She also knew he didn’t have the words to say it right now, knew that today he just needed to eat, that there would always be tomorrow to say it.

She helped him find an apartment in South Philly, close by to her own. He told her if she ever dropped by without warning he would kick her ass and though she didn’t believe him, she said that she wouldn't want to visit him anyway. 

“God could you have picked a heavier couch?” she grunted, heaving it up the stairs while Dennis sat atop the steps. “God dammit—” she cursed, dropping it against the third to last step and leaning against the wall clutching her hand to her chest. 

“Don’t be a weak bird, Dee c’mon,” he remarked, catching the arm of the sofa so it didn’t slide back down the stairs. 

“Maybe if you helped me asshole, this would go a lot quicker.” 

They’d been bickering all the way from the furniture store. Dee decided Dennis needed something to sit on besides his mattress, “ _ An adult has furniture _ ,” she told him, “ _ The floor doesn’t count _ .” 

 

The two had spent five hours deciding on what to get, Dennis insisting on trying out each one and meticulously rating them on feel, comfort, and style. It was a long and terribly drawn out process, one that ended in Dee nearly tearing her hair out and screaming for the salesman to persuade Dennis to leave however he felt was necessary. And so maybe she made the man flirt with Dennis, maybe it could’ve been considered immoral or wrong, but to her credit it got them out of there. 

Dee saw very quickly that this was something incredibly important to her brother. Like a bird beginning to nest, he moved all of his things from his dorm into the space, trying to fill it up as much as possible. There were photographs and various knicknacks, just so much  _ stuff _ that she had never really noticed before when they were kids, things he must’ve accumulated throughout the years that he had kept as though the memory it represented would be forgotten without something physical to hold, and touch, and see. Perhaps it was this permanence that caused him to keep and collect in small amounts. The few precious things he did want to remember needed to be physical because that's realer to him than the things in his head, where most thoughts were desperately tried to be forgotten. 

 

Dee wasn’t allowed to help him with this, she was to just stand there while he unloaded everything from his car. He conducted her to the left and to the right, in and out of his way. The only thing she was allowed touch was the couch she had forced him to buy.

“What do you think?” Dennis asked her, sitting down next to her on the edge of the couch like he was hesitant to call it his own. “Do you like it?” He was asking in earnest and his sincerity surprised her. 

“Yeah it actually—it looks good,” she said. “It’s homey. It’s good.”

 

Dennis cannot think of a time where he’d ever lived in anything that could be considered homey. His childhood home had been empty and callous, the long halls and big rooms were hollow and dark. It felt like one big cave that Dennis resided in one small corner of for most of his life. His dorm had been nothing but a tomb to him. But now he has this, he has this and sure he was alone but it was  _ home,  _ Dee had said it herself. 

  
  


-

  
  


Things were really good for a while, for maybe a second or two in Dennis’ life he felt on the cusp goodness and warmth. He graduated, he had his own business. He felt open to it. He welcomed it. Mac lived with him and he never got lonely like he used to anymore. And maybe sometimes Mac was hard to be around, maybe all of his self doubt and denial was hard to bear some days, but most of the time it was good. Dennis was happy, and when he thought back to losing his breath in the bathroom mirror on prom night, feeling overwhelmed and consumed with doubt and horror, he laughed a little because how was he to know things would turn out to be this good?

One morning, outside his bedroom there was a robin perched on his windowsill. She tilted her head to look at Dennis quizzically, her curious little figure bobbing up and down as if to say hello. Dennis did not return the sentiment, he grumbled to himself and rolled over in his bed, pulling the sheets up over his ears. He fell asleep for a little while longer, it was the greatest feeling in the world, waking up just to fall back asleep knowing you haven't got a thing to do that day. He woke back up to the sound of dishes clamouring in the kitchen, he heard an egg frying in a pan, heard another fall and crack its soft shell on the kitchen floor. 

Mac was everywhere; a mess of flour and oil and orange juice scattered around the counters and the table, bits of the mess were painted across Mac’s shirt and forehead. He cursed under his breath as he burned a piece of toast. Dennis stood in the doorway watching him and his chaos and yet he still couldn’t help but marvel at it. 

 

“Jesus christ how hard can it be to make toast?” Dennis whispered to himself, making his way into the eye of the storm. He stood silently next to Mac and took the bread before he could burn the whole loaf.  

 

“Making breakfast is harder than I thought,” Mac said, a bit defeated. Dennis could only laugh and shrug his shoulders, shaking his head at his idiocy. 

 

As it turns out Dennis wasn’t much better at cooking than he was. They both decide to get dressed and go out, to get fancy mimosas and treat themselves to a day of luxury which involved getting drunk and making a mess of somebody else's table. Dennis stared out at him at breakfast while he harassed the waiter and found it to be the most endearing thing that he wouldn't mind spending the rest of his life witnessing; just Mac and all of him forever in all of his awfully wounded and rare ways. 

 

On the walk back home Dennis’ felt suddenly high and mighty. He took them the long way back party because he didn’t want to confront the mess back home, but also because the day was so lovely and he’d never really felt this good before. The birds in the sky swooped in low, they flew in a V formation coming back home for the spring. Dennis tilted his head up a bit to watch them as Mac rambled on about the bar. 

 

“Dude I’m just saying, I’m totally built to be the bodyguard. I’ve got the perfect physique for it, I’m intimidating, I know karate so I can immediately disable the intruder—”

 

Dennis lowered his gaze to Mac, watching as he took a handful of rocks he’d been collecting along the way and tossed them at the pigeons that dare come too close to them. “Mac you just have to check ID’s man, I really don’t think we’re ever going to utilize your  karate skills.”

 

“Yeah but it’d be totally badass though, it’d be great for my resume.” 

 

Dennis wasn’t sure what Mac needed a resume for, but he just shook his head. It wasn’t worth arguing about it. If he wanted to believe wrestling with Charlie in the mud after school counted as formal karate lessons, so be it. 

 

Dennis shoved his hands in his pockets searching for a crushed carton of cigarettes and his lighter. Mac reached out his hand for one and Dennis just let him have the one he’d lit up for himself, passing it back and forth together and smoking it right down to the filter. Mac could be such a beautiful thing; soft and sweet framed in the afternoon sunlight. The blue of the sky was bright and blinding, it looked like crystal it was so clear. Dennis watched a plume of smoke cloud the air as Mac exhaled from the side of his mouth and kicked at the rocks he’d abandoned. 

 

“Birds are fuckin’ annoying,” Mac grumbled, shooing at a few of them gathering around an overflowing trash can. They scattered, bursting into the air in a flutter of coos and feathers. 

 

Dennis shrugged, said he kinda liked them, said he wished he could fly like that too sometimes. 

 

-

  
  


He wanted to be drunk, to be just light and loose enough that he could actually speak, but not so sober that he could think clearly. If he was drunk he would have a way out, just in case things went south, just in case anybody decided that it wasn’t okay and Dennis was no longer okay either.

 

He was nervous, somebody suggested that they should go to a strip club and maybe that wasn’t the greatest place to do this but when would there ever be a righter time than now, when things were so good and flush with opportunity? Dennis tried to picture it, how everyone could celebrate him after and he decided that maybe it would be alright. 

 

Dennis kept that nervousness simmering right at the surface all night, just enough to carry himself up high and alive. He drank with Mac and Charlie at the bar before they left, reveling in competition of who could drink the fastest. Dennis felt cool and he felt collected, his blood was heavy with alcohol but he felt like he was moments away from taking flight. Everytime he closed his eyes he saw birds in V formation coming home.

 

He watched Mac and Charlie argue over who won the last round and breathed through shaky but unafraid laughter, because despite everything these were his friends; the two of them framed in the dim light of the bar they had opened together, two losers shoving at each other to try and sabotage the other, beer spilling from their mouths. Dennis laughed and though his nerves kept him a little distant and a little reserved, he looked at them with nothing but love because these were his friends and it was going to be okay. Tonight he was going to set himself free.

 

There was a slight change. His father was going to be there soon and Charlie decided he wasn’t going. Dennis felt agitated, he felt wound up and high strung. He’d maybe drank a little too much, let the rush of the competition get to him. That’s alright though, he’d tell himself. Everything was fine. 

 

He argued and yelled at Charlie, told him just to go home. Dennis shook his head and stumbled into the car, gripping the steering wheel and shaking himself into a sobered state of consciousness. 

 

When he looked up, he saw his father standing in the break of his headlights. It’d been years since he last saw him and it twisted something in his gut that was vile and angry; any nervousness from before had turned callous and cold. There was a stilling of his heart when his father called out his name and suddenly his foot was on the gas pedal flying into reverse. He heard Charlie scream and white shocks of anger fled through his body. 

 

His father was here. He’d run his best friend over. There was nothing free about this. Dennis was suddenly so confined to circumstance, no matter how many times he begged it away there it was. What was once golden in the light of opportunity had now been taken from him. He felt robbed, like the chance to be happy and free for once in his goddamn life had been crushed beneath the squeal of his tires. 

 

They took Charlie to the hospital and Dennis would not speak a word the whole way there. 

  
  


-

 

“Can’t you just tell him to, fuck I don’t know. Tell him to go away Dee, do something please.” 

“What do you think I can do about it? He’d listen to you before he’d ever listen to me.”

Dennis paced around his sisters apartment, his hands furled in tight fists like he was grasping at the edge of a cliff, white knuckling the rock until his fingers bled. Outside rain pelted the roof of the building, it sounded like bullets coming down against the windows. The trees bent at will to the wild wind and Dennis wrapped himself up in the storm.

“Would you stop pacing? You’re making me sick.”

“Oh you feel sick?” he asked, stopping in front of Dee making a big show of himself. “What about me, huh? That asshole took everything from me, I was this close to being happy for once. For once Deandra, don’t you want to be happy?”

“I don’t—” she felt frozen, watching her brother stretch his wax wings into her living room, catching the flame of every candle she had lit on the shelves. “Yeah Dennis of course I want you to be happy, but what do you want me to do? There’s nothing I can do—”

 

He collapsed onto her couch, those wings folded up into a melting heap on her floor. He cursed his burnt and scarred brain for ever thinking he could have something good. He cursed himself for getting his hopes up because now everything was stolen, muddied, ruined, and dirtied. There was no salvaging this. All he wanted to do was to say it; he wanted to say it over and over and over again but he felt caged. He couldn’t say it, not now, probably not ever. He was caged in.

 

He suppressed a sob as he ran his hands down his face. “Yeah well,” he whispered, his hands coming down onto the tops of his thighs as he stood up. “It doesn’t matter now, does it?” He sounded so deflated, so far removed from the person he’d felt himself becoming just hours before. 

 

“Why does it matter if dad’s here? We can just carry on like we always do.” She didn't understand, she desperately wanted to but Dennis wasn't letting her in. 

Dennis shook his head. He looked at his sister for a long time before he felt like he could speak again without crying. “You lived in that house too, Dee. We survived that childhood together and we both know whatever good thing we had before is gone. I’m not free, Deandra.”

She laughed at him, “What else could you want to make you free, Dennis? You have a roof over your head, a good job in a business you own. You’re literally your own boss Dennis, I just don’t get what could possibly make you more free.” She was angry now, she saw Dennis as nothing but ungrateful, spoiled and whiny. She knew her father but she also knew that Dennis had their mother and she didn’t. Dee knew that no matter what she did she would always get more shit from her parents than he ever would. So how much more free could he possibly want to be? 

Outside there was a clap of thunder, a vein of lightning pulsing in the dark sky from the heat. Dee’s lights flickered. Dennis was desperate to come out of the darkness, to feel the light from the sun’s fingertips brushing along his cheekbones just as it had today with Mac. And maybe he’d never get that; maybe the only light he would ever see was from shocks of lightning setting his face all aglow, mad with heat and rage. 

“Whatever, Dee,” he said as he left her bewildered and confused. 

 

He walked home in the rain, gripping his shoulders and bracing against the wind that whipped his face red and purple. 

Mac was sat on the sofa when he got home. He looked up from the Tv when Dennis came through the door soaking wet and dripping all over the floor. 

 

“Dude you’re ruining the floor,” he said, jumping up to get a towel.

 

He handed it to Dennis who grumbled, “Yeah, whatever.” 

He changed his clothes and got into bed, unable to shake the cold racing up and down his body in convulsive wicked shivers. He listened to the Tv in the living room, to Mac softly snoring every once in a while on the couch, the distant sounds of a life he once heard in full volume quietly haunting him. He felt something in his heart freeze over, a sort of temporary halt in his breath. He closed his eyes and waited for the day he will be able to catch it.


	14. Back Then When I Would Ride With You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wholesome highschool flashback content !

Charlie hated Dennis Reynolds. He hated how he took up all of his best friends time and attention, he hated how he smoked all of his weed and drank all his beer, he hated his cocky attitude and the way he smirked like he was full of this Godly grace. Most of all he hated how those things started to grow on him, it may have taken him a year or two but it did. He liked how Dennis could have flashes of kindness, how sometimes his momentary warm demeanor would wrap around the room and settle any uneasiness in his chest. It was more of a hesitant and reluctant friendship, but he liked him most of the time. 

 

The heat was undeniable. The three of them stood in the swelter of the sun as sweat pooled down their faces. Their feet landed heavy on the asphalt as a basketball roared through the air, flying like a burning comet above their heads crossing through the path of the sun like a momentary eclipse. The ball landed about ten yards to the left of the net and Mac groaned. 

 

“Why are you so trash at this dude,” he said to Dennis who shoved him, wiping his brow with the front of his tee shirt. 

 

“Fuck you, I am not that bad. I’m just out of practice.” Mac rolled his eyes at him and broke out into laughter when he saw just how mad it made him. 

 

“Can I please play now,” Charlie asked. “Being the ref is getting boring.” Suddenly being the one to retrieve the ball didn’t feel so much like a higher duty like they told him it was; he just felt like a dog. 

 

“No way Charlie, you gotta get the ball for us man,” Dennis said, eyeing Mac to make sure he was still playing along.

 

“Actually, you know what?” Mac said —and Dennis could’ve killed him— “I think Charlie should play, you should go stretch out or something Den, take a breather.”

 

“Fuck you I do not need a breather—”   
  


“Uh huh, seems like it.” Mac grinned stupid and wide, Dennis wanted to punch him or kiss him, he didn’t know but either one seemed fitting.

 

He chased Mac and suddenly they were off in a flurry of fight, their sneakers kicking up the rocks that were scattered along the court. Mac ran towards the grass but couldn’t quite make it up the hill fast enough. Dennis’ legs were much faster and leaner than his, more built for these sorts of things. He grabbed the back of Mac’s shirt and took him to the ground, laughing and snarling with the sun beating down on them. Charlie chased after them right on their heels. He egged Mac on, shouting at him to go for the jugular or something excessively violent like that. Dennis pulled himself out from under Mac, panting and gasping for breath as he sprawled out on the grass beside him. 

 

“Alright alright, you win.” He surrendered if only to boost Mac’s ego; if only to be a good friend. 

 

“Charlie I won, you saw it right I won,” Mac exclaimed, sitting up on his heels. He was quickly taken down in one swift motion by Dennis’ grip behind his knee and Charlie laughed at him with a sort of good natured intent. 

 

Later that day, Dennis took them both out for lunch, another thing Charlie liked about him. They ate pizza and drank soda out on the sidewalk down the street. It was a good day; the last weekend before the start of summer vacation, the air was hot and dry, humming with the weight of the powerlines in the heat, all that electricity coursing through the black wire like blood rushing through the veins of the city. They ate together on a semi stilled street, engulfed in a rare moment of quiet in the city. Up in the trees lining the concrete sidewalk there was an empty birds nest all ready and awaiting the arrival of new eggs. Pieces of down and fluff drifted from the tangle of sticks into the street floating through the sky, emerging like stars or a first snow. 

 

“You’re still going to prom right?” Dennis asked them both through a mouth full of food. 

 

Charlie shook his head around a sip of Mountain Dew that Mac had told him would, “Shrink his dick.” Charlie just shrugged and said he didn’t have one anyway. “No dude prom is so lame. It’s just a place for losers who think being popular and a jock means jack shit in the real world—” 

 

“Hey—” Dennis interjected. “I am popular and a jock. And everyone knows those guys get the coolest jobs anyway, Charlie. They get business degrees and become CEOs and shit.” 

 

Charlie gave Mac a look; neither of them had the heart to tell Dennis that if he was hanging out with them he probably wasn’t popular or a jock. 

 

“Anyway,” Dennis said, “I’m going, and so are you two.”

 

“No way dude, I’m spending my night under the bridge.” Charlie spoke around a mouthful of food, bawling up his napkin and just nearly missing the trash can. Dennis did the same, the napkin landing not even close to the bin. 

 

“Whatever, you go hang out and do weird bridge shit, me and Mac are gunna go, right buddy?” 

 

Mac opened his mouth like he wanted to say no, but a part of him really wanted to be alone with Dennis for a night. There had been no mention of prom dates or girls so he said, “Sure man whatever, only ‘cos I’m not going back down to the bridge with you Charlie, that sucked last time.”

 

“It did not! C’mon Mac, you can’t pretend that tire swing we made under there wasn’t the greatest thing we ever did.”

 

Mac furrowed his brow. “Probably the most dangerous thing we ever did, but whatever,” he mumbled, but he couldn't lie, it was pretty badass. 

 

“I dunno man,” Dennis said. “You two do a lot of dumb shit.” 

 

Mac and Charlie just shrugged because he might’ve had a point. 

 

The three of them walked home with the angry hot sun just beginning to duck her head beneath the horizon line, her body burning out so the sky lit up like a bonfire with the shadows of its flame dousing everything in coal burnt black. 

 

The day was dying, tomorrow would be Monday and then prom would be that Saturday. Mac would go over to Dennis’ house and knock on the front door with his nerves twisted up in his throat, a mess of anxiety and apprehension. Dennis would open the door to see him with his shopping bag full of suit; black and white fabric boring holes in the plastic. Mac would get changed in the bathroom down the hall while Dennis swam high in sweet shocks of electricity in his bedroom.

 

He was buzzing so electrically he thought he ought not to touch anything for fear of being static shocked. There was lace fitted beneath the layer of his suit, trailing up his leg and over his chest. It was a wonder what he thought his date would say when she saw it, if she was ever meant to in the first place. 


	15. 10(00) Miles Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mac came out and Dennis wasn't ready.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw north dakota :-(( dhakfhjd wholesome content is over were sad now. also mandy seems very flat rn but i promise she doesnt put up w dens shit forever lmao she deserved better

“I think I’m out now,” Mac said. 

 

His words filled up the room like a small child’s balloon that got stretched too thin. Dennis felt the blood rush to his ears, felt as his whole body froze and went still and cold.

 

“Yeah I’m—I’m gay.” 

 

He said it simply; a build up of over forty years came rushing out in huge waves of relief. His tides crashed up against Dennis like a sea wall as he is hit with the admittance. And you know what; Dennis knew. They all knew, of course they did. But there was still something so confronting about it, something that Mac took and hit him square in the face with like he was getting back at Dennis for all those punches he’d thrown himself. 

 

Forty years of this back and forth; of this turbulent war waging inside of himself was now stilled for a moment. Dennis sat at the table in its wake, his face contorted feeling like his heart might collapse in his chest. The broken bits that had been rattling around in there, all those years of resentment, began to pull at the worn muscle of his heart. Of course he was happy for him, of course he was relieved. But there were seeds of jealousy growing like vines winding up around his throat constricting his breathing, choking him out as all sorts of new realities came into a vivid sense like an unholy nightmare. 

Dennis couldn’t go back to the apartment that night. He couldn’t go home because Mac would be there too, a causation of a cancerous want sitting right there in his living room. Mac had what Dennis wanted so unbearably so that it burned all day and all night long. Mac had what he wanted all those years ago, that the absence of left him bitter and angry, a broken shell of a man that wanted and wanted but could never fully receive. 

 

Dennis felt hatred towards Mac. He felt it brewing in the pockets of his soul that were so infested with denial it had rotted out black. Mac was free, impossibly so. And Dennis was caged, left to decompose alone in the dirt. Mac was free to give him gifts with reckless abandon. He was free to touch him and tell him he looked good and mean it. Mac was free and Dennis was not, and he hated him for it. 

 

-

 

Dennis got mean just because he could. He let something bloodied and impossibly cruel boil up over the sides of himself and he scorched anyone whenever possible. He would snap at Mac, throw insults at Charlie and Dee. He didn't even care enough to speak to Frank. He spoke only with animosity now, unafraid of weighty words like hate. He would watch his friends cower and he would convince himself he felt no remorse.

 

He would take walks at night just because he could; because he felt aimless and unbound. If Mac was gonna set himself free maybe he could too by wandering around the streets of Philly until he wore the souls of his shoes out, until he scratched at the itch working its way over his skin. Maybe he'd get shot, kidnapped, or robbed. He sorta hoped for something bad to happen most of the time so that way there'd be an excuse for his sharpness, there would be reason for him to drag his body along a block of stone and widdle himself into a fine toothed point. 

 

He felt all the goodness inside of him get sucked out with a single sentence. Mac took everything they'd spent years carefully building together and set it aflame. He watched that fire flicker in his eyes, watched it snake up like tongues tasting the carbon filled air from the burning pile of shit they had made a life out of together. Mac took things that allowed them to live together for more than a decade, things that allowed for them to sleep in each others beds, that let them jerk off next to each other without anything changing. Mac has dismantled that careful balance of barely living and now Dennis had to throw himself spiraling head first into the flesh of the city he's lived in with him for forty years, forced to face the chill in the polluted air that brought that biting harshness of reality with it.

 

Dennis had resigned himself to walking with a certain darkness smouldering in his chest, pouring out through his lips while he was crying for somebody to set him free. He felt starved of light, surrounded only by dark and night and deprived of the means to be free. 

 

Tonight he swayed a little in his stride, watched the city turn sideways as he let his head crack on the concrete, closing his eyes and giving in to the warmth pooling around his heavy skull. He wanted nothing more than to be free, in whatever way he could be.

 

-

 

He was up to his knees in salt water, wading into the ocean as he closed his eyes and waited for the water to lap at his neck and lips and nose and eyes. Across the water, there was a figure in the fog, an apparition that took the form of a brother, a friend, or a lover. The figure waved at him from across the ocean, their faces glistening together on the surface of the water. Dennis waved back staring straight into his eyes that he could somehow see in a crystal clear image. The outline of the figure’s body was too hazy around the edges to make out any proportions but he could see his eyes. They were full of love, of hope, and of openness. Dennis found himself reaching out but the closer he got to him the deeper the water got, rising above his knees and swallowing him up by the hips.

“Fuck—” Dennis cursed, trying to walk back to shore but his feet wouldn’t let him. “Jesus fucking Christ, how are you just standing there?” 

The figure did nothing, just stood there waiting for him on the other side with warmth humming low in his eyes. “Help me,” Dennis called out, desperation twisting around his words. “Just reach out your hand or something, c’mon asshole, please help me—”

Dennis woke up in a bed that was not his, in a house that was not his own. He had sweat through borrowed sheets, tossed and turned in a bed offered to him by a woman who owed him nothing. 

 

Mac had offered to raise his son with him. Mac wanted a family with him. It was a far cry from the man who used to shrivel up and die whenever anyone would even insinuate he was gay, from the man who refused to kiss him or touch him unless he was so drunk he couldn’t see who he was kissing anyway. Mac was out now. He had pried himself from the darkness and broke into the light, so bright it blinded Dennis. 

 

Over a thousand miles away in a different time zone Mac was reconciling with his loss. He was looking at the empty spaces of the apartment that used to be filled with Dennis. He was making amends with the empty bedroom where they used to lay together sometimes on their good days. He was drifting through the rooms forgiving each wall and floorboard. He hated being there now. Every inch of that apartment felt hollow and lifeless. He hated the fact that Dennis had left him all alone, and sometimes late at night in the shallow depths of his room, he wished he could hate Dennis too. 

 

Over a thousand miles away in a different time zone, Mandy was knocking on Dennis’ door. He lay there with his head buzzing and sparking from the nightmare, letting the horror fizzle out in a diminishing rage.

 

“Are you alright in there?” she asked him, voice so soft and sweet in each diphthong, the swing of each word catching on her accent. It was endearing to Dennis, he liked her, he did. 

 

“Yeah,” he said sitting up in the bed. He liked her just not in the ways he should.

He never tried to have sex with her here, for some reason it just didn’t feel right. He’d done it before, obviously, but something in himself had changed and it was beyond taking back or ignoring. 

 

Mandy sat down on the bed and smoothed out the blankets, taking a handful of the quilt wrapped around the foot of the bed and feeling the notches in the wool with her hands. Her mother had knitted that for her when she was in the hospital giving birth, she told him. She said she could take it out of the room if it was too weird for him, but he found it comforting for some reason. A gift of parental love stitched into the very seams of the object so that its warmth could be felt throughout the room.

 

“You don’t seem like you’re holdin’ up to well,” she whispered. Her son was sleeping just a few rooms a way. 

 

Dennis sat upright and laughed a little, “I dunno it’s not so bad. Just a little homesick is all.” He knew he shouldn’t have said that the moment the words left his mouth. “I mean, I know this is my life now, this is my home now. I just meant—”

 

Mandy chuckled and hushed him, “I know, it must be hard being away from them.” They sat in silence for a moment. Mandy began humming a song so quietly it was almost missable.  _ To rise in the dark, like birds preying on skin, we pray with our oxygen.  _ Dennis shut this eyes and let his breath fill up his lungs for a moment, his shoulders rising like the swell of a wave and letting it all come crashing down. 

 

“I want to make this work,” he whispered as she kept singing. “I do.”  _ Two children of ours, they came twirling in, we laughed very hard for a while. _

 

“I know,” she said, smiling at him like he was the most precious thing in the world. Dennis had only ever had one other person look at him like that and he left him back in Philly. “We see you trying.”

 

Dennis smiled and felt something inside him break. He’d never really felt that before; never really felt seen. His whole life he was desperate to be gone from people, wanting to be felt and looked at but never seen. Always and forever wanting to be noticed but held at a distance. He had never truly been seen like this before. 

 

Mandy placed her hand between his shoulder blades as he started to cry short and minute into the big silence of the dark. She pulled him in and cradled him, her hand rubbing his back like he was a child. He buried his head in the crook of her shoulder and wept while she sang to him in that hushed and gentle voice, “ _ but they've grown very far and tall, how we miss them, though happy they're traveling. Joel, nothing is real. We still have that field. You're closing up the bar, I'm warming up the car, ten miles away.  _

 

_ To die in your arms, your words, forming again.” _

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so so so much for reading! Please feel free to comment or message me, hearing all of your thoughts and reactions means the absolute world to me and I already can't wait to put out the next chapter!!!! :D
> 
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> [xoxo](https://saintmilksteak.tumblr.com/)


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